


By Blood or Bite (Pack)

by bigbootsmanofwar



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alpha Derek Hale, Alternate Universe, Alternative Universe - FBI, Bottom Derek, Christmas, Dissection, Dubious Consent, Everyone Is Alive, Explicit Language, F/F, F/M, Homophobic Language, Human Experimentation, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Magic, Magic!Stiles, Pack Dynamics, Physical Abuse, Politics, Sexual Content, Slow Build Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski, Slow Burn, Versatile Stiles Stilinski, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-10-30
Updated: 2015-08-26
Packaged: 2017-12-30 22:55:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 15
Words: 98,970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1024364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bigbootsmanofwar/pseuds/bigbootsmanofwar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Derek didn't do field work. He refused. God knew the last time he left the office, it didn't go so well. He's perfectly content to just sit in his lab, help out from afar, and keep to himself. </p>
<p>If the kid who kept breaking all the rules would stop confusing him, things might have been OK. You know, with the kid he's turned who he can't stop worrying about, the damaged splinters of family he has left, and the Uncle he doesn't trust looming over Stiles' shoulder.</p>
<p>If he wasn't so lonely, he'd pack it all in now.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

_“_ Fucking _witches_.” Trudging through three inches of snow that couldn’t even remotely be called white anymore was not what Stiles had signed up for when he’d taken this job. Well. OK. Maybe it kind was what he’d signed up for, but how was he supposed to know it would suck this much?

He was soaked to the bone, his clothes clinging to him, hair plastered to his forehead as he made the walk back to headquarters, his Jeep useless with its engine torn to bits. Fucking witches. His bat hung low by his side, freezing fingers flexing around the wood, which was splintered right down the middle, and singed around the edges. Fucking witches. He’d have to spend hours fixing it up, and no doubt expend a pretty big chunk of magic he’d had stored up doing so.

He wasn’t really _supposed_ to be on this mission, he supposed, but he’d known they were gonna need help, and hey, he had help to give. Just turned out that his magic was significantly less powerful than these bitches. At least Scott had managed to take one of them down while Stiles smacked the other into unconsciousness. A clean-up team would have to deal with them now. That wasn’t their job.

“You’re the one who tagged along,” Scott pointed out, spitting out a thick stream of blood and staining the snow beneath them with it. He was looking pretty beat up, but he still wore the satisfied grin on his face that had earned him his codename. Sunshine. If he wasn’t Stiles’ best friend, he would have hated him purely on that.

“I _know_ I’m the one who tagged along, but let’s face it, man, you needed me.” An argument that may have come out as a plaintive whine, but which was true nonetheless. Scott would have been on his own against an entire coven they hadn’t bargained on when they sent in an agent to dismiss what was supposed to be two at most; New-Age types whose magic was supposed to be crystals and palm-reading. A mounted offensive attack wasn’t in the cards. Stiles was going to chew out Talia when they got back for sending an agent in _alone_. Never mind budget cuts and understaffing. That is, if she didn’t fire him first.

“Boss isn’t gonna be happy,” Scott mumbled, shooting Stiles a quick concerned glance. Stiles was already on probation for the _last_ time he’d gone in guns-a-blazing, and compromised the entire mission on outdated information. Stiles grumbled in acknowledgement, wondering just how much trouble he was going to be in. He’d have to do some serious grovelling. Losing his job this close to Christmas was just downright freaking depressing, let alone the damage it would do to their struggling joined incomes. Scott was only a junior agent; his pay grade only just rested above Stiles’, and they both needed the money.

“Saved your life, though. She’s gotta be appreciative of that,” Stiles mused hopefully, swinging the bat idly in his hand. “Can’t afford to lose another agent, y’know? Oh, and I guess we value having you around,” he joked, nudging Scott as he wobbled on his feet in the snow.

Met only with a snort of amusement and an ensuing shove, Stiles scowled at the thought of being publicly reprimanded. He’d only been with the FBI for a few months, and he wasn’t everyone’s favourite. In fact, apart from Scott, he didn’t think he was _anyone_ ’ _s_ favourite. And while FBI was the official name, for tax purposes, they were really more mercenaries and intelligence gatherers than detectives. Everyone knew the Hale task force was _different_ , they just didn’t know why. No one outside of the clearance level would have guessed that it was because they were a pack of bloody wolves and a few magicians.

“It’s her fault for sending you in alone. I mean, come on, she could have spared Isaac, at least. Or _Boyd_. He’s a hulking, silent pillar of intimidation,” he complained, ignoring the looks he was getting from a few passer-by’s. A twenty six year old kid roaming the streets with a bloodied man in a suit, carrying a bit was a little odd, but they could mind their own damn business. Or he’d flash his badge. Fuck, he loved his badge. And it wasn’t a _laminate_. It was a badge. A badge, dammit. He was a certified detective. Not a lab geek like _Hale_.

“You know she can’t spare anyone in the field, and it was supposed to be an easy fix, anyway. I can take two witches on my own.” Scott’s voice sounded somewhat wounded, and Stiles had to resist the urge to simultaneously hug the big idiot and give him a good whack. A common cocktail. Scott was defensive of anyone that figuratively (and literally) scratched him behind the ears, and Talia had admittedly, been good to him. Before their budget got slashed by a bunch of Congressman who wanted the money for _press junkets_. Stiles could have bitched and moaned about it for hours, but no one was willing to listen for more than a few minutes.

They were getting closer to headquarters now, though, and Stiles was forced to put on a determined mask and head straight inside, Scott by his side. They were trailing in muddy snow and blood and a few of those curious glances had stuck to them, but inside the nondescript office building, they were safe from civilian glances.

Curious colleagues? Not so much. Scott was universally liked in the considerable task force; a steady, reliable young agent who was known to always have a smile for everyone and got the job done efficiently. Little bastard. Stiles would be pissed if he weren’t proud. The other agents eyed them as they walked directly to Talia’s office, knowing they’d be summoned anyway, and Stiles noticed that most of the glances sent Scott’s way were both sympathetic and concerned, and most sent _his_ way were irritated and long-suffering.

“Heard you really fucked up, Stilinski.” The comment was backed up by a long, slender arm hooking ‘round his neck and bare legs falling into pace with him. Her lips, red as always, and Stiles always wondered if she just _tattooed_ them that colour so she’d never have to reapply, were curved into a small smirk as she looked down at him, height difference made ever larger by the workplace-forbidden stilettos she managed to keep strapped to her ankles.

“Actually, _Reyes_ , I was out saving lives, as per usual,” Stiles shot back, ignoring the unison snort from both Scott and Erica. “I _was_! You would have been fucked without me and you know it, Scotty. And _you_ – “he poked Erica hard in the arm, to which she barely batted an eye “- weren’t even there, so shut it.”

“Language,” came the soft, weak protest from Deaton in the corner, but he’d barely lifted his head from his work, and they all knew his attempts to civilise them were mostly a habit for him now. They were all roughly the same age, apart from the higher-ups, and a few of the lab technicians, and they all had foul mouths. Stiles first and foremost. Another facet of his charm. Or a reason to be disliked.

“Hey, I’m just saying, there was a whole lot of chatter over the radio about you two, and they are _not_ happy,” Erica countered, looking almost gleeful. Despite the downright hungry look in her eyes, Stiles knew she was teasing. Mostly. He might have got on people’s nerves, but she at least kept talking to him week in and out. He suspected he was a bit of a laugh for her on a daily basis. If she hadn’t been obviously dating Boyd, he might even have made a move.

“Really?” Scott’s eyes were wide as he turned to her, and for a moment, he looked like the kid who got bit all over again, sixteen and terrified. Stiles was amazed how easily he could switch to puppy dog mode and have people wrapped ‘round his little finger. The worst part was, he didn’t even _exploit_ it.

“They’re angry at us?” There was an underlying concern in his voice, and Stiles knew the prospect of losing his job was even more disastrous for Scott than him. Scott adored his job, mostly on the basis that he liked knowing he was helping people. Stiles liked the badge. And the bat. And the kicking ass. And maybe he liked helping, too. A little.  If they’d ever put him in the field officially.

“Pissed. But not at you, Sunshine,” Erica answered, flashing her teeth in a grin. “Your buddy here got us all in big trouble. Couple of civilians saw the firework display those bitches put on, Talia had to send in someone to convince them they didn’t see a damn thing. Lotta money down the drain, especially in these _hard_ times,” she added, rolling her eyes. Most everyone felt the same way about the budget. Bullshit, and they would have liked to go tear the throats out of every guy who voted to slash it.

Scott deflated a little, looking visibly relieved, before his concern extended to Stiles. The human could practically sense the big brother vibes emanating off him, but shrugged them off. It had been his decision to defy his orders, and follow Scott. He’d take responsibility. He was about to say as much to Erica, who was grinning like a freaking Cheshire cat again when the frosted glass door to Talia’s office swung open, and she was standing in the doorway, blatantly fuming.

Shit.

Stiles squared his shoulders and met her eyes, defiant. Probably not the best move, challenging an Alpha who was already pissed off with him, but no one ever said he was a genius. Or had a speck of common sense.

“Boss, listen – “ he started, but was cut off with a snarl and a flash of red eyes, every wolf in the workroom immediately shrinking back.

“No, _you_ listen to _me_ , Stilinski,” she snapped, taking a few angry steps toward him. “I’ve had it up to here with your bullshit. The _third_ time this month you’ve fucked me around! Do you have any idea how much money we’re wasting on you?”

Her voice was carrying through the entire room, and even if she had been whispering, Stiles knew every wolf in the place (and there were a lot) would have heard nonetheless. The shouting was just to humiliate him.

“I know, and I’m sorry, but this time Scott really did need help!” His insistent tone was weakened a little out of cautious fear for his job (and his jugular), but he remained insistent anyway.

“McCall was fine without you. _Fine_. He is an agent, he can handle himself. You are a human with a small capability for magic that’s useful in the office! Not in the field. There’s a damn reason you’re not out there, and I expect you to follow my orders if you want to stay in this task force, do you understand me?”

The fury was pouring off her in waves now, and Stiles was fairly sure the only reason she hadn’t shifted yet was because she had an extraordinary amount of control. He shrunk down a little instinctively, and opened his mouth to defend himself, when he was cut off again.

“Mom. Calm down.” The voice was soft and almost uncaring, and for a moment, Stiles had to think hard who it came from. But the title made it clear. Derek freaking Hale. _Seriously?_ He spun ‘round to face the desk in the corner beside Deaton’s, eyes wide. He also vaguely noticed about half the office doing so as well, gratified.

The man was looking up at them carefully over his glasses, his eyes focused on Talia. Stiles didn’t think he’d ever seen the guy’s head not hunched over his desk. Huh. Talia faltered for a moment, clearly just as surprised as the rest of them.   

“Derek, this isn’t your concern,” she snapped after a moment, recovering herself gracefully. It must have been a pretty big shock to have the kid who barely ever spoke in the office mouth off to her in the middle of what Stiles was pretty was a temper tantrum that was going to be office gossip for a long time.

“It was a coven,” he replied, making no effort to raise his voice beyond a normal speaking volume. They heard him crystal clear despite it, the room having fallen into a hushed silence. There was a touch of awe to it as well, but maybe that was in Stiles’ mind. “McCall would have died if the kid hadn’t ignored you,” he added, fixing Talia with an unreadable kind of stare, before lowering his head again and returning to whatever he had on his desk, as if he’d never spoken.

The room stayed dead silent for a few moments, before Talia turned back to Stiles. Scott was looking suitably cowed, his eyes down out of respect for his Alpha, his body language submissive and clearly humiliated. Stiles felt a pang of guilt; it hadn’t been Scott’s fault, and now he was getting shit for it. He was more concerned with how Derek had even _known_ what had happened, though. They hadn’t filed a report, yet. Clean-up wasn’t back to report.

“Is that true, Stilinski?” Talia asked after a long moment, voice thick and strained, as if having to concede this was killing her. It probably was. She hated being wrong, and everyone knew it. If you wanted to get in good with Talia Hale, never prove her wrong.

Stiles nodded, swallowing hard, fingers flexing nervously around his bat without him realising it. “Yes, ma’am,” he answered respectfully, deciding it was probably better to use the honorifics when she was backing down. Grovel a bit, and he might keep his job. “There were seven of them, and they weren’t small town like you – _we_ – thought. We neutralised the situation, but it was a struggle,” he explained.

Talia’s face changed for a moment, anger falling away to reveal concern, looking them both over quickly, before it returned to annoyance. Whether it was at them or herself, he didn’t know. Probably them. “Well. That’s different,” she managed finally, and Stiles could feel Erica sucking in a breath beside him, shocked. A concession from Director Talia Hale, scariest freaking Alpha in the place, was rare.

“You’re suspended from all potential field work for a month,” she added, the severity of her voice just a little softer now. “You will stay _in_ the office, restoring whatever magic you’ve depleted.” That was about as close to ‘Rest up’ as he was likely to get. “And I reserve the right to add whatever punishment I feel like onto this.”

Stiles nodded immediately, relief blossoming sweet and cool. He wasn’t getting fired. _Fuck_. That was awesome. Money for Christmas. Food to live on. And he got to stay with his friends. Or. Well. Scott. And possibly a few others who tolerated him.

“Thank you, ma’am,” he said, perhaps a little too eagerly, before flicking his eyes to the ground, mirroring Scott’s actions. He might have been human, but it was still just as important to Talia that he follow the damn rules. And respect was one of them. He was getting slightly better at it.

“As for you, McCall,” she added, turning to Scott. The line of the wolf’s jaw hardened, and he lifted his head, every inch the respectful Beta ready to take on his punishment. “Job well done. I’ll be sure to let the higher ups know how you handled yourself today.”

Scott’s eyes nearly popped out of his head, and he broke out into the happy grin that Stiles was fairly sure cheered everyone up, no matter how pissed they were. “Thank you, Alpha,” he replied, almost bouncing on his toes. She gave Stiles a last pointed glare, before turning back into her office. Stiles didn’t miss the slightly puzzled look she shot at Derek before she slammed the door.

“Shit, Stilinski, you’re a lucky bastard.” It was Jackson’s voice who broke the silence, and Stiles’ mouth immediately turned down into a scowl. Jackson was the most arrogant little prick he’d ever met, and half the time Stiles didn’t know why they even kept him around. But then he remembered the team liked having a deadly lizard on a leash, and he took every opportunity to remind the other man about it.

“Or maybe it’s just my unending charm,” he countered, barely bothered by the audible groan from half the operatives in the room, returning to their own work now that the show was over. He wasn’t fired. Best news of the day.

“No, you’re lucky, man,” Scott added, still beaming as he peeled off his suit jacket and lay it haphazardly over his desk. “I can’t believe you only got a _month’s_ suspension. That’s gotta be some kind of miracle.”

Stiles balanced his bat against the side of the desk and perched on the side of it, bathing in the knowledge that he’d managed to save Scott’s life, take out a bunch of seriously nasty witches, and not get fired in the process. “Yeah, a Christmas miracle,” he joked, trying not to show how very relieved he was. He was already on shaky terms with the office, he didn’t want them to see he’d been freaking out about this.

“Hey, Stiles,” called a voice from behind him, and he turned to see Isaac standing a little ways away as he always did. Stiles thought the kid had some aversion to standing less than a metre from another human being.

“Yo, Lahey. What’s up? Guess you saw the show,” he answered, the joke falling a little flat. He always felt slightly uncomfortable around Isaac. Like he shouldn’t be joking around, ever. What with the amount of bruises the kid used to come into work with, they all knew what had been going on. No one ever said anything, but they all knew. Now being around the man was akin to watching those commercials where they beg you for money for starving African kids. It makes you squirm guiltily, summon a bit of sympathy, and ultimately change the channel.

“Are you OK?” he asked, looking far more worried and earnest than Stiles had ever seen him. Usually he hung around the edges of each little group of friends, not really a part of any of them yet. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that he kept a metre away at all times. “Derek – what he said. You really saved Scott’s life?”

“I’m fine, Isaac, don’t worry,” Scott interjected, and Stiles could just tell he was going to end up adopting the stray. Scott was good with strays, he liked them. He took care of people, and Isaac was a pretty prime example of the kind of guy Scott liked to rescue. Stiles watched the relief spread over Isaac’s face, filing it away in the corner of his mind curiously for future reference.

“Yeah, we’re all good,” he answered for himself. “Bit banged up, but fine.” Scott had been more than a bit banged up earlier, but he healed fast. It was his own bruises that would stick around for longer.

“Oh, good.” Isaac was visibly deflating, tension leaving him in almost tangible waves, and for a second, it looked like he was going to break the one metre rule. In the end, he stayed away, instead watching Stiles carefully, eyes lingering on the bruise just above his cheekbone. “That looks pretty nasty. You should see Deaton about it. He’s got this magic cream stuff that makes bruises go away pretty quick,” he added. He looked like he wanted to add something, but his mouth stayed shut.

“Oh, yeah, good idea, man.” Stiles chose not to tell the guy that he could make the cream himself on a good day. Though his magic was running pretty low. Maybe he would take up the offer. “Thanks.” Isaac grinned, the smile changing his face entirely, and he suddenly looked a lot more like a guy their age, rather than ten years older.

“No worries. Ta- Director Hale’s mad, but she was pretty worried when she heard about how much magic they were using,” he informed them, voice lowering a little, like he was sharing a secret. Which he may well have been. Stiles knew Isaac had some kind of weird rapport with Talia, but he didn’t know what it had stemmed from. It was a mystery to the whole office who had bitten Isaac, because he was only a ‘pup’, as he’d heard others calling him. Whoever it had been must have abandoned him. Maybe Talia had taken pity.

“Huh. Well, it was pretty impressive. Gotta say, didn’t think I was going to be walking into a full-on firefight,” Stiles said, trying to keep the brag out of his voice. To be honest, he knew he could get a little bratty after a big win, and he was mostly just pleased he was still standing.

“Was she really worried?” Scott asked, looking distinctly pleased with that fact. Stiles knew the wolves had a pretty strong need to please their Alpha, and knowing she had been concerned for their wellbeing was a nice little compliment.    

“Oh, yeah. I mean, in between the shouting about having to spend more money, and how reckless Stiles is, and how insanely fired he was going to be, she was pretty concerned,” Isaac answered with a sheepish smile shot Stiles’ way.

“So it was Derek saving your ass.” Scott’s voice sounded somewhat wondrous, and Stiles had to concur. It was pretty freaking strange.

“I don’t even know how he _knew_ ,” he added, shoulders slumping a little as he tried to work it out. Derek didn’t ever leave the office if he didn’t have to. He didn’t think the man had ever been out in the field, and he probably wanted it that way. So how would he have known that they’d been in some serious danger? And why would he have broken his self-proclaimed little vow of silence to defend him?

“He listens more than you’d think,” Isaac said quietly, before faltering. Stiles was looking at him, puzzled, because when did Derek even ever speak to _anyone_ , how did Isaac know, and he took a step back, widening the distance.

“Anyway. I’d better go. Just – glad you’re OK. Don’t do anymore stupid shit, I don’t want you to get fired,” he added hurriedly, turning on his heel and retreating back into his own corner where Erica and Boyd were draped over each other.

Scott turned to face Stiles the same time he angled his own body, sharing a puzzled, bemused expression. Shrugging, Stiles picked the bat back up and chucked Scott’s blood-stained jacket at him.

“Is it me, or is that guy weird?” Which only earned him another shove as they headed out of the office, both employed, and both elated.

***********************************

If there was one thing Stiles couldn’t live without, it was the amazing water pressure in their pokey little shower. Yeah, there was barely enough room for one normal sized person, but the searing hot spray beating down against his skin made being a little cramped up worth it. He’d graciously let Scott have it first the moment they got home, seeing as he was the one splattered with blood, but the second he’d stepped in himself, he could feel the stress and fear and tension of the day sliding away.

His muscles loosened, having been taut all day with the knowledge that he was going to be well and truly fucked for ignoring orders (he wasn’t), and the fear that Scott was going to get seriously hurt (he didn’t), and the worry that his magic was running lower than it really should have been (it was fine).

All in all, actually, the day had kind of been a success. If you loosely defined success as still being alive, employed and decidedly un-maimed by an angry wolf, which seemed to be a constant danger in Stiles’ life. He’d clocked some serious field time, even if it hadn’t been authorised, and wouldn’t be exactly favourable on his official record. Point was, the _rumour_ of how badass he’d been would spread, and maybe some of the other wolves would warm up to him a little. He was well aware of how much they resented having a human around on what was supposed to be an all supernatural task force. Never mind that he could wield some cool freaking magic.

Long fingers lathering shampoo into his hair, Stiles tried to push away the image of Scott on the ground, bleeding and barely breathing. He knew it would give him nightmares tonight, as most of the nasty stuff they saw did, but it was a small price to pay for doing something so cool. And Scott had recovered, like he always did. Stiles would only admit to himself that he worried about the day when Scott wouldn’t bounce back.

And while he had a few bruises and aching muscles himself, he was mostly unscathed. A pretty awesome feat, considering the amount of magic that had been thrown at him. It was the first time he’d used a shield that he’d modified himself, which was a dumb idea, really, when they were under attack, but it had worked, saving the both of them from the worst of what was coming. Those bitches didn’t know what was coming to them. He had seen the sneer on the leader’s face when he’d come at her with the bat, expecting it to do fuck-all. Well, contrary to popular opinion, Stiles wasn’t stupid, and he wasn’t going to go into battle with just ordinary human _wood_. It was a wolfsbane soaked, magically decked out weapon of destruction.  

At first, pretty much everyone in the office had openly laughed when he’d turned up with it, but they’d all changed their minds once they saw it in action. They might not respect Stiles all that much, but they respected the bat, and the work that went into it.

Ugh. Speaking of.

Stiles groaned to himself quietly as he contemplated exactly how much work was going to have go into fixing it. He hadn’t come up against anyone who’d been able to damage it until now, so he hadn’t had to do any reparations. He suspected it was going to involve a lot of concentrating on warding it with that same shielding charm he’d used earlier today. Not to mention the amount of wolfsbane and other freaking herbs he was going to have to rub into it. 

“Probably have to ask freaking Derek,” he muttered to himself, pulling a highly childish face that he was glad only he could see, to be honest. Scott would have shot him a withering look only rivalled by his father’s. Not that he particularly disliked Derek. Just that the guy was weirder than Isaac, never talked, and sometimes looked a little strangely at the gatherings of wolves around the office like he wasn’t sure if he wanted to kill them or eat them.

And yet. Weirdo, anti-social lab geek Hale had defended him. _Him_. He’d actually lifted his big bloody head and opened his big bloody mouth to call off his mother. That was a dangerous move, even if the big bad wolf was your Mom. “Freaking bizarre,” he mumbled, spitting out a stream of soapy water that had trickled into his mouth when he opened it.

 _Why_? Why had he even bothered? God, it made no sense, and Stiles didn’t like things that didn’t make sense. He liked things to fit into their boxes in his mind, to come together when he pulled at their strings. Derek Hale sitting at his desk and saying a total of zilch made sense. Talia getting pissed as hell that he’d ignored orders and gone out on a mission anyway made sense. Hell, Stiles getting hard over sharing a bed with Scott when they were thirteen made a sick kind of sense. This? Nada.

He shut off the water with the question still in his mind, where it would stay until he had an answer. That’s how his mind worked, and he knew it. Despite the pretty debilitating ADHD (which was better than high school, but still not great), he was a problem-solver, and this was a problem. One that didn’t really do him any harm, but a problem nonetheless.

He towelled off quickly, the heat in their apartment shut off last week after they failed to pay the bill (they needed money so bad), and threw on a pair of flannelette pyjama pants and a hoodie, abandoning the steamy bathroom and collapsing beside Scott on the sofa, who was looking perfectly comfortable in his t-shirt.

“You know, fucker, you should be paying the whole heating bill since you have your own built in heater,” he grumbled. Scott had heard the complaint many times though, and instead of arguing, which was pointless when Stiles was in a bitchy mood, wrapped an arm around his shoulders and let the other man lean against him, his natural body heat seeping through fabric to warm him up.

“The more logical argument is we shouldn’t pay the heating bill at all because we already have a walking radiator,” he pointed out with a grin, barely flinching when Stiles nudged him hard in the ribs with his elbow.

“Shut up and give me the remote, asshat.”

“No freaking way, it’s my night, we’re not watching The West Wing re-runs again.”

“Heathen. Fine. Put on your _cartoons.”_

“Family Guy’s not a cartoon!”

“…”

“ _Ow.”_   

                              

    

     


	2. Chapter 2

The thing was, Derek just wasn’t great with words. It wasn’t that he disliked everyone in the office, (well, some of them, yeah), or that he resented his job (he loved it), or even that he was angry with any particular thing (there were several things). He just didn’t see any openings in conversation, no matter how much he watched. The other wolves grouped together and chatted about work and their lives and girlfriends and boyfriends, and he had none of that to talk about.

His strengths lay in numbers and equations, logical thinking and planning out strategies. He had no need to engage in any of that social bullshit. Even if he’d attempted it the way his mother and Laura were always on at him to do, the attempts would be awkward and stilted, and he’d go from being ‘weird Derek Hale’ to ‘freak who can’t hold a conversation.’ Much easier to keep to himself and do the work that was needed of him.

Which was _important_ , no matter what was said. He knew people laughed about him and Deaton; Derek in charge of the human aspect of the lab, science and evidence and forensics, planning, where Deaton acted as their ‘witch doctor’. But half their cases would go unsolved or unprosecuted if he hadn’t done the work to back them up. It was all well and fucking good for the agents to go into the field snapping and snarling, but without him, their success rate would be down near to zero.

None of that made a damn difference to Laura. His older sister was sick and tired of him spending all his time around her, instead of going out and making some real friends. Her words. Harsh as they may be, she never kicked him out. Talia, on the other hand, did, on occasion. The only other person he spent any time with outside of work was Isaac, and that was different again. Isaac was his Beta. They were closer than _friends_.

He was in the middle of trying to track the bursts of magical activity that had been popping up around the city in the last week when his phone buzzed, startling him out of his reverie.

_[Laura Hale: 6.45pm]_  
 _Let me guess. You’re sitting alone and contemplating frozen dinner._

Glaring hard at the screen, Derek ignored the fact that yes, she’d got it spot on. Isaac was working his second job, bussing tables, which no one but Derek knew about, because the kid was embarrassed enough to be flat broke, and insisted on contributing something more than his shitty salary to the bills, and he was vaguely wondering whether he should heat up the frozen pies in the freezer.

[ _Derek Hale: 6.46pm]  
I’m working. _

He put the phone aside, knowing full well it would buzz again within a matter of seconds, but hoping against any kind of reality that it _wouldn’t_ , and he could get back to what he was doing.

_[Laura Hale: 6.47pm]_  
 _You’re always fucking working. Go out to a bar, get laid._

Sage advice from the woman who hadn’t had a relationship in years. He didn’t say that to her, though. It was always dangerous provoking Laura about _her_ lack of sex life.

_[Derek Hale: 6.49pm]_  
 _Not interested. Not everyone’s libido is as persistent as yours. Go away._

A lie, because Derek was pretty sure he and Laura were on about the same level when it came to craving intimacy. Or, well, to put it bluntly, a fuck. But it was the wolf wanting sex more than him. He’d gotten better at ignoring it. He was perfectly content ( _it was easier)_ to jerk off rather than put in the effort to try to talk to some stranger and work his way into their bed.

_[Laura Hale: 6.51pm]_  
 _Liar. You’re being cowardly, as per usual. Mom says you’re not allowed to come over til you’ve made some form of humanly contact with someone not related by blood. Or bite._

Growling under his breath and strongly considering throwing the phone at the wall – he decided against it, because the last time he’d done that, he’d had to buy a new one, and that was more effort than he would have liked. Fucking paperwork up to his neck – he thumbed out a last irritated message.

_[Derek Hale: 6.55pm]_  
 _Tell Mom to fuck off. I’m an adult, leave me alone to do my work._

Dangerous words, because even if he was 31, and entirely capable of living his life the way he wanted to, Talia was still his Alpha, and it was built into him to respect her. The words had the desired effect, though, and Laura left him well alone, presumably to go tell their mother and plot how to make his life even harder.

He turned back to his work with a restless sigh, trying to force his mind to focus again. The amount of magic used lately had been off the charts, and not in a good way. There were always steady hums of it, pockets where covens practiced regularly, the ones that their agency left alone, because on occasion they informed and helped them out, but Derek had gotten good at tracking spikes of it where it shouldn’t be, with Deaton’s help.

And right now, there was a whole lot of it, in one chunk across the map he had laid out across his kitchen table. That much could only mean a coven somewhere. An unapproved one. That was dangerous. His mother would have noticed, too, her own informants letting her know, and she would presumably send someone out to track it down.

Of course, she might not send the team she should have. He had been subject to long rants at family dinner once a week about the ‘sons of bitches’ cutting her funding. He wasn’t very pleased about it himself, half his and Deaton’s budget for magical supplies and lab equipment vanished, but he wasn’t as pissed off as she was. She practically steamed from the ears whenever it was mentioned.

He considered contacting one of the junior agents about it himself, someone like McCall, who was sure to get the call, to warn him of how big of a surge there had been, but he discarded the idea quickly. He’d be briefed before he was sent out anyway, there was no point in Derek making an awkward phone call and making the both of them uncomfortable.

In the end, he set the map aside, cleared off the kitchen table and returned every implement he’d used back to where it belonged, leaving the table as bare as it had been before. It was big enough to fit six to seven people, but Derek sat alone on one of the sides. He felt strange sitting at the head of the table. Talia always sat head when she came over. And his father had sat at the other end. Before.

After a few minutes of sitting quietly thinking about things he really shouldn’t have been, because it always left his mind in a dark, unhappy kind of mood, he stood to heat up the pies after all, smirking to himself a little, knowing exactly how much it would piss Laura off that he was eating frozen again.

Fuck it. He had no one else to cook for, since Isaac wasn’t home. He wasn’t going to any effort. He sat at the table for a few more hours that night with a novel, his mind only occasionally drifting back to the power surges before he dismissed them, and waited for Isaac to return home before he could go to bed. He slept uneasy. As usual.

* * *

The next morning when he went into work, he was surprised to find the office so riled up. Most of the agents still hanging around to do their paperwork, which it was common knowledge every agent despised, were speaking in loud, unhappy terms. If he could have, he would have tuned it out, but as it was, the irritation in the room was thick and heavy, and he couldn’t but listen in quietly from his own desk, Deaton working in peaceable silence beside him.

"Fucking Stilinski, he’s gonna get this whole operation shut down," Whittemore was groaning. Derek’s mouth twisted into a scowl before he realised, and he worked quickly to resolve the neutral mask he kept up. Whittemore was a good agent, a special skill they needed, but Derek struggled to like him.

The mention of Stilinski was interesting, though. He seemed to be what everyone was talking about, for some transgression Derek only figured out an hour into the morning. He’d ignored Talia’s orders to stay in the office and help out where he could, and gone into the field with McCall. It certainly sounded like him. The kid was reckless and rash and chased glory, all qualities that you tended to fucking _avoid_ in a field agent. Derek didn’t know how he managed to land a gig here, but he suspected it had something to do with McCall’s pleading. Talia seemed to have a soft spot for him, a rarity with her. She didn’t have a soft anything for anyone but family. And even then.                   

Derek envisioned Stiles running along after the team that Talia had no doubt sent out, and it was a somewhat irritating, somewhat amusing idea. Everyone knew the kid had an OK magic skillset, but that he’d yet to prove he even belonged here. If anything, he belonged in the office with him and Deaton. Not out in the field waving that stupid bat around. He tossed aside the image in favour of focusing on the blood spatter he had in front of him; distinctly _not_ OK for a normal analyst to be looking at, considering it was viscous, blue and radioactive.

It was only when he heard a commotion begin to start up again that he flicked his eyes up, curious, and saw a bloodied, worried looking McCall making a beeline for Talia’s office, his heartbeat erratic and indicative of some serious wrong-doing. Beside him was Stilinski, looking a little bruised, that fucking bat swinging beside him. Only difference was, it looked almost pulverised. He could smell the scent of burnt wood from all the way across the room, and though he usually liked the smell of a wood fire, this simply smelt like danger.

His gaze travelled to search for the rest of the team, undoubtedly as beaten and unhappy as the two young men, and found nothing. His brow furrowed, before it dawned on him that his mother must have sent McCall out alone. He felt a sudden surge of anger with her; how _dare_ she send out an agent alone against an entire fucking coven, did she want another one to die? He quashed it for now, though, instead watching the scene unfold, Reyes’ draping over Stiles grating at his nerves as the click clack of her heels reverberated through the office.

It was only when Talia came bursting out, eyes blazing and shouting, that he felt a pang of guilt for not calling McCall like he’d been considering. If he’d warned him, this might have been avoided. And the pain in the ass kid, Stiles. He might have been casually disregarding the chain of command that was precious around here with the arrogance that only a human could achieve, but he’d saved an agent’s life, risking his own. It seemed unfair.

"Mom. Calm down." The words were quiet, but he knew she’d hear him. He met her eyes as she turned, shocked, and defended the agents calmly. He’d get in a whole mountain’s worth of shit for reprimanding her in public, but it hardly mattered. She couldn’t stay pissed forever.

He looked down again when he was no longer needed, though his ears stayed tuned in to the resulting conversation, eyes just glancing up, subtle enough to be unnoticeable. He could practically feel the pride emanating from McCall – he refused to use codenames outside of a mission like the others did, but he had to admit, Sunshine seemed appropriate right now.  

Good. He deserved praise if he’d managed to take down what was undoubtedly one of the stronger covens they’d ever come across, judging by the power surges he’d been studying. And Stiles; he must have been stronger than they had thought if he was able to spar with that kind of power and come out of it with all his limbs intact. That didn’t change the fact that he’d been a fucking idiot, not listening to orders, and that Derek had only spoken up out of some sense of obligation. Had he made the call like he’d wanted to, and Stiles had tagged along, it would have been his own stupid fault.

He tried his hardest to keep his mind focused on work as Talia disappeared and the rest of the office dispersed into hushed whispers, all greedy and gossiping, a lot of it about him. But he was used to tuning out hearing his name in other people’s elaborate stories. He’d had plenty of practise. It was only when he heard Isaac’s voice that he looked up again, curious.

Isaac didn’t talk to anyone. He _tried_ , but he wasn’t very good at it. This office had a way of forming cliques, even worse than a human office would have. They were supposedly all under the same pack jurisdiction of Talia’s Alpha, all under her orders, and all having the utmost respect for her, but there had been others that had come to them from different packs, and they grouped together, cold and exclusive. Isaac didn’t have a previous pack to come from. He had Derek.

The earnest way the kid was speaking told Derek that he was being perfectly serious about being worried about both the agents, and he filed the information away in his mind for later use. Isaac barely expressed any intense interest in making friends, only the passing loneliness in having no one to really talk to in the office, knowing to leave Derek well enough alone. They had both agreed that if anyone knew Derek was the one who had bitten Isaac, it would raise all kind of questions. Nepotism being the least of them.

"He listens more than you’d think." The words were spoken softly, and Derek could see the fondness on Isaac’s face before it gave way to panic. While it was somewhat flattering to have himself spoken about like that, it was also not a good idea to let on that Isaac knew anything about Derek, and he could feel irritation rising. Until Isaac scuttled away, looking fairly terrified, and ruining any chances he’d had of making friends.

He could have smacked Stiles for the last comment, which he _knew_ Isaac had heard, because he watched his face fall as he hunched over his desk, just like Derek himself did, but settled for gritting his teeth, and going on with the rest of the day in silence.

* * *

"Why don’t you stay home tomorrow night and rent a movie. I’ll sit through whatever you want," Derek offered, hovering over a simmering pot, spoon in hand. Isaac was sitting on the couch, supposedly watching television, but Derek could see that his eyes weren’t really focused. He was thinking, and thinking never led to anything good.

"Thanks, but you know I have dinner with my Dad," he answered immediately, automatically, as if it had been programmed in. Derek’s mouth turned down into a scowl and he turned his face to peer into the pot of soup simply so Isaac didn’t notice.

They had worked incredibly hard to allow Isaac to come to live with him after the bite, but the condition had been that he returned home twice a week for dinner with his father. Which might have been OK if they’d been normal people. But twice a week Isaac came home with a new bruise, or a crooked bone not quite healed, and Derek had to re-set it for him.

Ideally, Isaac had the perfect solution to no one finding out what his father did. He could _heal_ and get rid of the evidence before anyone saw, but he hadn’t been a wolf long enough to know how to heal his bruises away in an instant, and so Derek saw them all anyway, dotted along his arms in the form of clear fingerprints where he’d been grabbed and yanked, peppering the length of his spine where he’d been kicked repeatedly, the faint outline of a laceration on his face, red and smooth where it was trying its hardest to heal.

Much as the evidence was made clear whenever Isaac limped home, shutting himself in the bathroom and refusing to come out the first few times, there had never been any explanation offered. Derek had been furious those first few times, demanding to know what had happened, though in the gut of his stomach, he already knew, of course he did, but Isaac never said a word. Not a truthful one.

I fell down the stairs. I tripped. It’s been raining, the ground was slippery.

All terrible excuses, but he’d never spill the truth. And eventually Derek had stopped pushing, simply because he didn’t know what to do. He didn’t want to ask his Mom for help. Isaac was his Beta, his very first, and he was meant to be looking after him on his own, proving for once that he was worthy of the legacy she’d given him.

He couldn’t kill the bastard, much as he _ached_ to. His wolf reared up in his chest angrily every time he caught a glimpse of a new injury, screaming at him to eliminate whatever threat had been hurting his Beta, but it was highly against the law for a wolf to harm any human, no matter what their crime. They were supposed to hand them over to a human law enforcement official, and let it go from there. And he wouldn’t risk hurting his family anymore by getting himself in trouble.

In the end, the only thing he could do was take away what pain was left, and teach Isaac slowly how to heal them away so that no one at work saw them anymore. Even if they were still there.

"You can miss one night, he’ll understand," Derek argued after a long moment. He _wouldn’t_ understand, and it definitely wasn’t an option if Isaac wanted to continue going home to get the shit kicked out of him twice a week.

"Derek. I’m going. Leave it alone," came the firm reply, and while it wasn’t the answer that Derek wanted, he had to be pleased with the no nonsense tone. He’d been trying to subtly let Isaac know that he didn’t have to follow any orders of Derek’s unless he made clear they were important, whether Isaac was on a job, or there was a threat, or he was in danger of pissing off Derek’s family. Hearing him lay down his own law, however harmful, was at least a step forward.

Letting out a short, terse exhale, just so Isaac knew Derek was unhappy with the decision, and _why_ , though like always, it remained unspoken, he ladled out the soup he’d heated up (a freezer job, simply because he’d been too tired to cook for real) into two bowls and joined Isaac on the couch, handing him a bowl and spoon.

"Fine. But we’re gonna talk about this at a later date," he grumbled, tucking his feet beneath him and tuning in to whatever rubbish Isaac had on the TV. Isaac stayed silent beside him, eating quietly until the next commercial break, when he lifted his head and opened his mouth cautiously.

"That was pretty cool, standing up for Stiles today," he ventured, voice careful and guarded, as if he was going to end up setting Derek off. The older man was used to that, being treated like a ticking time bomb, and though he knew Isaac did it because he was _used_ to living with a bomb, he still hated it.

"Yeah, well. He’s a fucking idiot, but he did save a life.  Not fair to fire him," he answered gruffly. And it _wasn’t_ fair to fire him for protecting the life of another agent. The next screw-up he made, well, then they could fire him.

"He’s not _that_ much of an idiot. He has a lot more to prove, you know. He’s a human amongst all these wolves, and they’re intimidating, and the only one who likes him is Scott," Isaac countered, voice bleeding with empathy that only spoke to volumes of experience, and for a moment, Derek had forgotten that for a short period, Isaac had been the human amongst the wolves, the skinny kid Talia had hired to run tech support. It was Derek who made him what he was.

"He disobeyed orders. He’s only in this job for the action, the prestige. He shouldn’t be an agent. He should be working in _our_ department, if anything," Derek reiterated, brow furrowing.

"He risked his life to save another guy, he’s _meant_ to be out in the field, not cooped up in a fucking office all day staring at a desk!" There was a terse silence, and Isaac looked down, shame-faced.

"Derek. I didn’t – that’s not what I meant," he said quietly, setting the empty bowl on the coffee table. Shaking his head, Derek did the same and leaned back against the couch, eyes firmly planted on the television.

"It’s OK," he said, voice short and hard, betraying the fact that it was actually anything but OK, and that fuck, it _hurt_ because he’d told Isaac everything, why he refused to do fieldwork, why he stayed in the office, and the bitter tone pierced at him like daggers. But he wouldn’t get angry. Not when the kid looked genuinely upset with himself.

Eventually, Isaac gave up on trying to speak again, instead leaning in against Derek’s shoulder in silence, his own kind of apology. It was much better accepted than the last, Derek wrapping an arm around his shoulders and letting the kid nose against his neck the way he did when he needed comfort.

"I know you want to be friends with them," he said, breaking the silence. "I shouldn’t be so harsh." Actually, he thought he was being perfectly fair, judging by what he’d seen, but that wasn’t going to make Isaac feel any better.

"Fat chance of that happening. They think I’m a freak," the younger wolf muttered miserably, voice stressing the last word a little, and Derek was certain that he’d heard the word from more mouths than just fucking Stilinski’s. 

"They just don’t know you, that’s all. No one really knows you."  Which wasn’t entirely Isaac’s fault. He tried to make friends, but it never worked so well. They were more similar than either of them would have liked to admit. "Keep trying. Mom likes McCall, at least, he has to be OK. Ask them out for a drink or something."

Or that’s how he imagined other people socialised. He didn’t know _what_ he’d actually do if he wanted to befriend someone for real, but the advice seemed sound enough for Isaac.

"You could come _with_ us. If they said yes," Isaac said hopefully, and though Derek was willing to boost his confidence and press him to make friends like he wanted, (and he wanted friends more than anything, the loneliness emanating off him was unbelievable sometimes), he wasn’t willing to go out and sit in some bar and try to work out what to say to a bunch of twenty-somethings who already thought he was some kind of inept weirdo.

"Sorry, Ise, not gonna happen," he said frankly. Sighing, Isaac rolled his eyes, but didn’t press the matter. He was going to have a hard enough time asking himself. He didn’t have stones to throw.

"I just want - a friend. You don’t count. No offense." Snorting under his breath in mock-hurt, Derek tightened his arm around Isaac’s shoulders, and tried to ignore the pang of familiarity striking discordant in his gut. He’d felt the same kind of loneliness in Isaac when he’d met the kid, felt it echoed in him, in the way he’d expertly used cover-up on his bruises, in the way he tried to eavesdrop on conversations just to try to pick up something he could possibly relate to. There was no mystery as to why Derek bit him. He wanted a friend, and he didn’t want this kid to hurt anymore. It just wasn’t exactly turning out the way he’d hoped.

"Get a drink with them," he repeated firmly. "Just – don’t let Stilinski’s asshole nature put you off. They’ll like you."

Isaac looked fairly disbelieving, but he let his head rest on Derek’s shoulder and nodded, turning back to the TV in an effort not to dwell too heavily on the fact that by the time he had a chance to ask either of them, he’d have another new bruise or crooked bone to contend with.

In the end, they stayed quiet for the rest of the night, and Isaac’s room stayed empty, his bed still perfectly made up, the man slipping in beside Derek and soaking up his warmth. An apology, for the earlier comment. He’d probably punish himself for it for weeks, because he’d seen how hurt Derek was. Putting a stopper in both of the raw, gaping holes in their chests was the least he could do. Even if only for a night.

* * *

The office was still buzzing with disapproval when Derek arrived the next morning, though the tone of it seemed to have changed. It was less pissed with Stiles, and Derek refused to let himself believe that it was because he’d lent credence to the idiot’s actions just by standing up for him, though that’s where his mind was taking him, over and over. Now, it was angrier, low chatter about the budget.

Always the budget. Derek was sick to fucking death of hearing about the goddamn _budget._ He got enough of that from Talia, he didn’t need it from every freaking body else in the entire department. But since no one spoke directly to him, he had to keep his own mouth shut and count it as a blessing.

"Can’t believe she just sent out McCall on his _own_. Was she trying to kill him?" 

"No, it wasn’t her fault! She doesn’t have the same manpower as she did last year, for god’s sake, Reyes."

"Do you think she knew how many witches were actually out there?"

"What, are you kidding, did you see her face?"

After a while, hearing them back and forth about whether or not his mother was at fault, Derek stood abruptly from his desk, abandoning the report from yesterday he was supposed to be overlooking – Stilinski’s Jeep had bitten the dust, that didn’t seem fair – he stalked outside, earning a concerned look from Deaton, which he pointedly ignored.

It was an unseasonably nice day for Christmastime in DC, weak rays of sunshine breaking through the clouds and melting the thin layer of snow on the ground to leave the sidewalks glistening and shining. With the occasional cigarette butt sparking out of life and smearing black onto the concrete.

Derek pulled a smoke out of his back pocket and lit up, leaning against the back wall, slightly damp against his jacket, and exhaled deeply, smoke mingling with his own breath clear on the air. He didn’t much like the taste of cigarettes, and they weren’t addictive to him like they were to a human, but they provided an easy out of the office when he wanted it, and a way to sit outside alone without seeming ‘anti-social’.

It _wasn’t_ his Mom’s fault. Not really. He knew how fucking hard it was to a run a taskforce within a Bureau that neither understood what purpose they really served, or liked them because of it. She had to ensure they remained a secret, all the while lobbying for more money, because it wasn’t a cheap fucking business, protecting humans.

But she _had_ sent out McCall alone. That wasn’t OK. Surely she had to have known what she was sending him in to. But she had looked shocked. That hadn’t seem to have been an act, because he _knew_ her lying face well, and she wasn’t wearing it. Had she not been tracking the spikes of activity as he had been? He felt one of those inconvenient stabs of guilt again, but it was _her_ job to keep herself informed about this stuff. Not his.

Didn’t stop him from feeling like he’d failed the whole lot of them.

He was contemplating going and asking her about it, apologising for the text the other night, because really, it had been out of line, and he knew it, when he heard another heartbeat approaching, the crunch of shoes against pavement, and he looked up, surprised.

"Hey," the kid said, and _why_ had Stilinski followed him out here? He kept his face almost painfully neutral, and said nothing, taking another drag. Stiles seemed to be waiting for some kind of reply, though, discontent with the silence Derek had provided.

"Can I help you?" he said finally, voice low and rough the way it got sometimes without him meaning it to. It usually happened when he didn’t know what the hell to say. And he really didn’t know what the hell to say now, or why Stiles was even out here talking to him.

"Uh, yeah. I just wanted to say thanks for yesterday. You know, sticking up for me with your Mom," the kid explained, shuffling on his feet, as if Derek had forgotten the events of the previous day. Idiot. The thank you did catch him by surprise, though, because since when did _anyone_ say thank you for that kind of stuff?

"You helped McCall, it shouldn’t get you fired. But you’re still a fucking moron for not following orders," he countered, voice deliberately hard this time. There were rules you just didn’t fucking break, and following the orders of your Alpha was one of them. Human or not.

Stiles’ face fell a little, and Derek could smell faint irritation wafting him, but, to his credit, he remained civil, keeping his temper under control.

"Well, the way I see it, I’m just sitting around doing nothing helpful when we don’t have enough agents for a serious job," he argued, just a slight edge to his voice that betrayed the cool demeanour he was maintaining. And yeah, alright, that was true. It was a waste of resources, but Stiles wasn’t the same kind of resource as _McCall_. Stiles was a paperclip to McCall’s staple. Flimsy and unreliable, easy to bend and screw up.

"How we disperse agents is Director Hale’s concern, not yours," he shot back coolly, before exhaling another puff of smoke to stop himself from saying anything further, about how she had enough damn stress in her life, and she didn’t need more from a jumped up kid like Stilinski.

Stiles looked as if he was going to argue for a moment, and a part of Derek waited for it eagerly, relished the opportunity to take the smart ass down a couple of notches. He was perfectly ready to pounce, a fight brewing in him before the kid even opened his mouth, his wolf restless and enthusiastic.

He didn’t get the fight he was spoiling for, because Stiles seemed to have managed to swallow down whatever argument he was going to throw out, and instead leaned against the brick wall beside him, eyeing the cigarette with the same kind of silent disapproval his mother did.

"OK. I’m sorry for ignoring the order. It was a dick move, even if I did end up helping." That sounded genuine. Surprisingly genuine, actually, and Derek’s eyes flicked to the side briefly while he listened for any sign of a lie, a skip of a heartbeat.

Nothing.

He stayed quiet, figuring his silence would probably count as some kind of acceptance of the apology, because he wasn’t going to just come out and say ‘Oh no, it’s fine, you didn’t break one of the most serious rules here or anything’.

"Right, so anyway, since I’m stuck on office duty for like a month, I figured doing what I was told seemed like a good idea. And my bat got totally shot to shit in that fight," the human continued, acting as if Derek had spoken in return. Huh. He liked that kind of conversation; where he didn’t have to put it in any kind of effort.

"I noticed that. How much magic did you lose?" he asked after a moment, because this was at least something he didn’t mind discussing. Work was good, he could stick to that topic. And maybe Stiles wouldn’t seem like such a self-absorbed idiot if he was talking about something he supposedly took seriously.

"A fair bit," Stiles shrugged, a clear attempt at nonchalance that didn’t quite work. Derek raised a brow, and waited for the act to fall away. They usually did when they were that badly constructed.

"OK, so a lot. I lost, like, two weeks of building that baby up. Fucking witches," Stiles burst out, crossing his arms and blowing out an exasperated breath.

Bingo.

"How many were there?" This was something he was actually curious about, because if they hadn’t all been bagged and tagged (there were four in custody), then they still had a problem on their hands.

"Think I counted six in between their bullshit pretty lights attacks," Stiles scoffed. Six. So they did still have a problem. Derek mulled that over for a moment before he realised Stiles was speaking again, and he tuned back in.

"It’s just _tacky_ , you know, like, they were wielding some serious magic, they could have put me on my _ass_ , but instead they waste their time trying to distract me with _shiny_?" He looked disgusted that that should even have been a consideration. Personally, Derek though it probably would have worked quite well on the kid.

"Trust me, if I had that kinda power, there’d be no flashy stunt crap. I could take someone out with, like, a _blink_ , and bam, they’re down for the count in the time it took to make some fireworks," he added, a small gleam in his eye that Derek recognised from when he was the kid’s age.

"You and McCall handed that kind of power on your own?" he asked, aware that some small sliver of awe had slipped into his voice before he could catch it and force it back down his throat. Stiles looked up at him, surprised for a moment, before nodding.

"Yeah. I mean, we were pretty lucky, we coulda bitten it at any moment, but he’s a pretty quick mover. And I knew a bit of magic that helped." He shrugged, the nonchalance for real this time, despite an almost undetectable trace of pride. Deserved pride, Derek had to concede.

"Your Jeep bit it," Derek replied, though he wasn’t sure why he was still continuing this conversation. He’d gotten the information he wanted, and his cigarette was nearly down to cinders. He could go back inside now.

"Ugh, yeah, I know, and the department won’t cover it," Stiles sighed, a look of great displeasure flitting across his face. "Which, yeah, understandable, we’re kind of in the shit right now with money, but that thing’s my baby. I’m gonna have to walk everywhere til I can save up enough money to _fix_ it," he added, and Derek recognised _that_ look well enough, the look of longing. He remembered when Talia had cut him off from his own trust fund while he’d been through college, deciding he needed to know how to be a real kid. He’d lived off crackers and jam for months.

"You need a ride to work?" he asked, the words coming seemingly out of nowhere, because his _mind_ hadn’t sanctioned that little fucking offer. He didn’t offer anything to anyone, ever. Unless it was family, people just screwed you over, so what the hell was the point in helping them out?

Stiles’ eyebrows rose almost up into his hair, and Derek could see his own surprise mirrored there on the kid’s face. He wondered if he knew exactly how rare this was.

"Uh. Yeah, I mean, that’d be great. Scotty usually hitches a ride with one of his friends –" the kid’s mouth seemed to twist on that word, like it was sour on his tongue "- But a ride would be sweet. You sure?"

No, he wasn’t sure, or he didn’t _want_ to be sure, but he was, nodding and chucking his cigarette butt to the ground, stamping it out with the toe of his boot. "Wouldn’t ask if I wasn’t," he shot back, maybe more nastily than entirely necessary.

It didn’t seem to affect the kid, though, who was practically fucking glowing, a grin splitting his face. "Dude, you’re the best," he said, and now the awe had crept into his voice. It sounded much better there than hitching a ride on Derek’s words. "Uh, gimme your phone, I’ll put my number in, text you the address," he added, holding out his hand.

This felt remarkably like the kind of exchange Isaac had wanted to happen, and Derek hadn’t even intended for it to happen. He hesitated for a moment before pulling his phone out of his pocket, handing it over to Stiles and watching him thumb in a number.

"Don’t you need mine?" he asked when the human handed it back to him.

"Nah, I already looked at it. I’ll remember it, I’m good at numbers," he said with a wave of dismissal. A silence hung between them for a second, before the tell-tale distant sound of chatter hit the air, and Derek knew now was the time to leave, before the rest of the smokers bustled out here to gossip and laugh and nudge each other like friends did. He had no part in that. He barely had a part in standing here awkwardly in the melting snow with the most incompetent agent in the task force.

"I gotta go," he said abruptly, turning his back and heading inside, not bothering to turn and see whether or not Stiles looked pissed off or (hurt) irritated by the sharp dismissal. He was well used to that look on people’s face, he didn’t need to see it again. And a sharp feeling in his gut told him, that for whatever reason, he didn’t want to see it reflected on Stiles’ face. Ever.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this is way later than I wanted it to be, purely because my wifi at home despises me, and refuses to function normally. So I wrote it all fairly quickly, and had to wait to post from another network. But I hope you enjoy, and the third chapter is in progress. Promise. As always, feel free to drop me a line on tumblr.


	3. Chapter 3

Much as he loved (adored, worshipped, revered) Christmas, the holiday season with no money, no car, and increasingly of late, no best friend, _sucked_. It sucked ass. Actually, no, it sucked balls, and not even in the way Stiles usually liked.

And adding to how much it _sucked_ , was being stuck in the goddamn office all day, every day. He wasn’t dumb enough to try to skip out, to be doing his own kind of research, which mostly involved hanging out with some low-level covens that convened in shitty magic stores and organised bacchanals. So he was completely and totally stuck, at his desk, trying to avoid the snippy looks people were giving him.

At least he had plenty of time to consider how very much his life sucked. And, as Talia probably planned, time to reflect on how dumb his own choices were. He wasn’t _stupid_. He knew he’d screwed up, and he knew in an office like this one, it was practically sacrilege ignoring a direct order, but hey, he was Stiles Stilinski, and he thought himself above it all. Sort of. Not really. He just wanted to _help_. And at least he’d managed that, in a roundabout kind of way.

He was sitting at his desk resisting the urge to just pull up Solitaire and bang out a few quick games to make him feel better about himself (he kicked ass at all computer games), instead pretending to read a three _hundred_ page report about the importance of the chain of command – cruel punishment, one of which he suspected Talia was going to take pleasure in heaping on him.

It was mind-numbingly boring, and he’d much rather think about the slightly awkward ride into work this morning. He’d been so taken aback by the offer that came out of freaking _nowhere_ from maybe the biggest asshole in the office that he’d accepted straight away, and he _was_ grateful. It was awesome to not have to walk, in the cold, because it was getting freezing again.

He’d texted the guy that night, memorising the number and writing it in Sharpie on the wall of his poky bedroom. They could paint if the landlord wanted an inspection. While all he’d got back in a response was a seriously terse sounding ‘Fine. See you at 8’, and Stiles could practically feel the scowl coming out of the phone, Derek _did_ turn up at eight on the dot.

And holy _fuck_ , his car. Stiles had nearly had a small freaking orgasm there on the sidewalk, his eyes popping out of his head. The car was _beautiful_. Not as special as his Jeep, but amazing nonetheless. He thought he could see a glimmer of pride through the put-on unimpressed scowl Derek wore, and had slid onto the leather passenger seat happily, the heater already having warmed the car up.

Despite the compliments Stiles spewed out, Derek had barely grunted, keeping his eyes on the road as he made his way into work, muttering something about taking him home at five, and don’t be late, before he’d stalked off to his own desk where he promptly sat in silence and hunched over something that must have been fascinating for him to be so engrossed in it. Typical.

The guy was freaking bizarre. Stiles had only been on the force for a few months, but he’d already known to stay well away from Derek Hale. The guy was grumpy, rude, and anti-social. Don’t even bother inviting him to anything, he doesn’t go anywhere, that’s what they all told him. But don’t say a word about him where Talia could hear you, or you’d be out on your ass quicker than you could blink. Family protects family. That, at least, Stiles could appreciate.

So he’d kept way out of the guy’s way. Seemed simple enough. Derek didn’t _have_ to stand up for him, though, and a thank you had seemed – prudent. Plus, he’d wanted to ask about getting some more wolfsbane on the cheap. It was only when Derek had stalked off all of a sudden and Stiles was back at his desk that he realised he’d forgotten to ask altogether.

He looked up from the report when he heard a door slam, and hurriedly tried to make it look like he’d been reading, in case it was someone who’d rat on him, or even Talia herself. He relaxed when he saw it was only some guy storming out of Talia’s office, the cut of his suit telling Stiles he earned enough to have to be higher grade than Talia was. Maybe a politician. He had that wormy look about him. Though – not entirely unattractive. An attractive kind of wormy. A scoundrel. That’s the kind of face he had, Stiles thought. A dick who’d be great in bed. The man caught his eyes on his way out, lingering for a moment, the corners of his lips twitching up into a tiny smirk, before he turned away and left in silence.

His eyes flicked over to Derek, who was looking up too, miraculously, though his face was stormier than normal. His eyes seemed hard as he watched the man, before catching Stiles glancing at him, and looked straight back down, mouth turning down into the neutral mask he wore all the time. Huh. That looked like it had been recognition. But maybe not.

“Stilinski!” came a sharp bark from behind him, and Stiles spun ‘round to find Talia watching him from the doorway. “My office,” she ordered, gesturing him forward with a curl of her finger. Brilliant. More punishment. Another report to pour over, maybe.

He said none of that, though, smart enough to keep his mouth shut, and simply stood in silence, following her into the small room, frowning a little when she snapped the curtains shut. Shit. Was he getting fired? Dammit, he was getting fired, she’d changed her mind, he was going to be _broke_ , and she didn’t want him making a scene.

“Take a seat,” she said after a moment, and he realised that he was still just standing there, inwardly having a mental breakdown. He did as he was told, watching the woman take her own seat, running a hand through her hair and sighing. It occurred to him that she looked maybe more stressed than he’d seen her since the time he even started work. 

“Uh, are you OK, ma’am?” he asked tentatively when she stayed silent. He was all for _not_ being fired, but sitting in awkward silence while she cradled her head in her hands seemed – weird. She looked up, her eyes flickering a pale red for the briefest of seconds, before she seemed to have realised what had happened.

He’d never seen her eyes red like that. He knew it could happen, because she was an Alpha, and he’d seen other Alpha’s eyes, but she’d always had the best control he’d ever seen, and she was renowned for it. Shit, she must be really upset.

“I’m fine. I have matters to deal with, that’s all,” she said dismissively, and he ducked his head, knowing enough to act the submissive puppy to make her happy. She paused, watching him, before tipping a small white pill into her hand from a bottle beside her and swallowed it dry.

“Valium. Werewolf strength,” she informed him, seeing the confused looked on his face. “Mr. Deaton tweaks the formula for me. It’s been a hard couple of months,” she added, and suddenly, she seemed very human. Kind of like how his Dad looked when Stiles insisted on salad instead of fries. 

“I can probably make you something that won’t make you nauseous,” he offered. “My Dad takes Valium. He throws up like he’s dying or something when he’s on it. Dunno if that’s the same with your werewolf metabolism or … but I can work something out.”

It seemed like the right thing to do. She’d been the one to take Scott up on his pleading, given Stiles his job that he so desperately needed (and loved). She looked quite visibly taken aback, the sternness of her face softened by surprise, before nodding.

“I haven’t been this queasy since I was pregnant with my – “ she stopped there, a ghost of an anguished looking expression flitting across her features, one Stiles only caught because he knew it all too well. He’d had dealings with that expression, and he knew it when he saw it. Always.

“Right, yeah, I’ll start looking into it,” he said, a little awkward, remembering why he was in here. She cleared her throat as if his words had recalled her memory, too, and straightened, every inch the Alpha again.

“Yes. Anyway. I wanted to discuss something with you. You know I reserved the right to add to your punishment,” she began, and Stiles’ stomach sank.

“Please don’t fire me,” he interrupted, any scrap of his dignity gone. “I know I screwed up, and I’m really sorry, I know I caused a whole lot more trouble, and I get the whole disrespect thing, because even though I’m just human, it totally applies to me, too, and I mean, Scott and I have bills to pay and I really don’t want to not have electricity on Christmas morning and – “

He was out of breath anyway, but Talia cut him off, holding a hand up. She looked slightly bemused, which really didn't help his case at all, but he shut up immediately, catching his breath. Any hope of catching his dignity was gone.

"Stop. I'm not firing you."

He paused for a long moment, staring, before breathing sigh of relief, shoulders falling and slumping in relief. She looked like she was going to keep talking, though, so he straightened up, paying attention.

"However. I do have a need for you. _Not_ field work. I think you've proved you can't be trusted with that for a good long while. Fortunately, this work is just as important," she explained, and ordinarily Stiles would probably have been excited, but right now, she was wearing the same kind of smile that the dick in the suit had, and he felt apprehension dawn.

"And - what kind of work is it?" he asked carefully, praying internally that she wasn't sticking him on clean up, or _lab work_. Her smile widened, and she slid a paper across the table to him, about ten pages long. Oh, _great_ , another report.

"I think you can help us out a lot, Stiles. I'm assigning you to work with our liaison to Congress. My brother, Peter Hale. He was just here a moment ago, maybe you saw him," she said, raising a brow.

Fuck. The dick in the suit. Talia's _brother_. Jeez, was everyone in that family freaking attractive? That didn't seem fair. Stupid werewolf genes. He swallowed, and nodded, trying not to let his displeasure show.

"Yeah, I think I caught a glimpse. Uh, he didn't look too happy. I guess - you told him he was getting a shadow?" he replied, running a hand through his hair. What the fuck did they want with him in _Congress?_ Jesus, the most he knew about politics was from _TV_. He wasn't any kind of expert.

"Not a shadow," Talia countered sharply. "A partner. Peter handles our dealings with Senate Appropriations and Congress, and he's currently working to have our budget restored to something we can at least work with," she added, tone growing bitterer with each word.

"And you want me to do ... what exactly?" He was working hard to keep from looking ungrateful, because _yes_ paid work, this was awesome, even if it wasn't exactly the kind of work he really wanted to be doing.

"He's hit a few dead ends. There are certain senators that don't share the same feelings about our existence that, well, maybe they should. They refuse to deal with Peter simply because of his - nature." A brief little spasm of anger flitted across her face, then, and Stiles could see why he'd never want to get on her bad side.

"Wait a minute, wait. Are you telling me all those stuffed shirt morons know about _werewolves_?" he asked, incredulous. He'd thought the point of their whole operation was to ensure that no one actually found out about anything.    

"Most of Congress, yes," she answered, looking him rather seriously. "We need funding, and they need protecting. Rest assured, Stiles, if they were going to leak our existence, they would have done it a hundred years ago when they first found out."

Well. That was a serious fucking bombshell. Stiles took a second to consider the fact that pretty much all of freaking DC knew that werewolves were a thing, and probably everything else they hunted, and that none of it had made it to the mainstream media. That was kind of impressive. Scary, but impressive.

"Right. Yeah. OK. Sorry. Go on. They don't like your brother because he's a wolf," he prompted, recovering himself quickly and turning his attention back to the job at hand. The paying job. With money. For food and maybe Christmas presents.

"Yes. Which poses a problem. That's why I need you to work with him. You're human. Young. Charming when you want to be. You'll be convincing the senators that we need to be funded, and that we need it now." The tone sounded final. She wanted no argument.

"But - uh, I don't know anything about politics," he offered weakly. She didn't want argument, that didn't mean she wasn't going to get any.

"Peter will be there to help, don't worry. He can be ... abrasive, but I've a feeling you'll get along fine. Now, read over that information I've given you, and report back here Monday morning. In a _suit_ , Stilinski. A nice one." 

That seemed to well and truly be the end of the conversation. Nodding, Stiles took the paper and stood. "Thank you, ma'am," he said, a touch more grateful sounding than he actually was, and returned to his desk, a little stunned.

 "What was that all about?" asked a voice from beside him, and he turned to see Isaac hovering by Scott's desk, as if he was trying to look as if he belonged there all the time. He took a breath before answering, reminding himself not to be an asshole.

"Talia wants me to work with her brother doing some - _politics_ thing," he said, shrugging. "I think I'm supposed to convince a bunch of politicians to give us money."

Isaac's eyes widened, and he inched closer, sitting on the edge of Scott's desk. Huh. Breaking his metre rule. Interesting.

"Seriously? Wow, that's kind of a big deal. That's, like, a promotion," he replied, looking somewhat awed. Stiles personally hadn't seen it as a promotion at all; rather a pretty big _de_ motion, to reading papers and making small talk with men and women twice his age, but he guessed he could kind of see how it was impressive.

"I ... guess. But I don't have a damn idea how to do it. I don't know what she's really expecting from me," he sighed, running a hand through his hair and succeeding only in messing it up further.

"Well, she wouldn't give you the job if she didn't think you could handle it," Isaac reasoned. He looked a little more at ease than usual. Stiles wondered if he was trying to look normal, or if something had simply gone right for him in his personal life or something. "Plus, you get to work with another Hale. That's a _big_ deal. She must trust you."

That was sort of a nice thought. Talia trusting him. Hell, anyone trusting him, really. A total of three or four people back home trusted him, and he was pretty sure it was just Scott here. And now, maybe, Talia. A small grin played on his lips, and he looked back up to Isaac, pleased.

“Maybe. Guess I’ll have to study up, huh?” he replied, waving the papers in his hand. He’d only briefly skimmed them, but they seemed to be personal and professional information on the senators he’d be speaking with. Even if _that_ concept still sounded a little surreal.

“You’ll do fine,” Isaac said, looking pretty confident about that statement. He paused, then, and Stiles waited for him to add something. He half had internal bets on whether the guy was going to run away again, but he told himself to stop being an asshole. Lahey was being nice. Nicer than anyone else in the office. Except maybe Derek. But that was weird in and of itself.

“Uh. So where’s Scott?” he asked finally, eyes flitting back to the empty desk he was sitting on. Stiles’ mouth twisted a little, despite his trying to stop it, and he put the papers back on his own desk, knowing he wasn’t going to be doing any studying if his mind was on Scott.

“Dunno. Think he’s probably on a job he just forgot to tell me about. Awesome guy, but he forgets to tell me where he’s going a whole lot,” he answered finally. Understatement. Scott barely ever told him where he was lately. He came back to the apartment late, left early, and barely showed his face in the office. But Stiles couldn’t complain. Shouldn’t, rather. Scott was his best friend, and it wasn’t like he was being a jerk about it. He seemed to just – really _forget_ to tell Stiles. He guessed the action of being a proper field agent caught up with you.

“Oh. Well, it seems like he has a lot of jobs. He’s always first to get the call. Jackson bitches about it to no end,” Isaac said, and for a second, it looked like he was going to grin. It didn’t happen, but it _could_ have. Maybe. Stiles didn’t know whether the guy was capable of it. It occurred to him he’d sort of like to see it happen.

“That’s cos my man Scotty’s far superior to lizard boy,” he scoffed, and pointedly ignored the glare he could feel coming his way. Apparently lizard hearing rivalled werewolf hearing, which sucked. Isaac managed a kind of choked laugh, his lips twitching up a little, and Stiles felt a misplaced surge of pride.

“I wouldn’t go around repeating that to his face. He’s very sensitive about being the only reptile,” the Beta said in low, hushed tones, and Stiles had to smother a laugh. Apparently, once he’d crossed his metre rule, Isaac could be kind of funny.

“I was gonna wait til Scott was here, but it doesn’t look like he’s going to turn up, so …” Isaac trailed off, and any of the easy, casual air between them dissipated. Stiles stayed silent rather than butting in like he might be inclined to, letting the guy finish. Or summon whatever strength it looked like he was to finish.

“Did you guys wanna go for a drink or something?” he finished finally, eyes flitting to the floor immediately after he’d spoken, like Stiles was going to freaking reprimand him or something.

“Yeah, sure. I mean, I can’t speak for Scott, but I’m fairly sure he’ll be up for it,” he answered, shrugging. He’d have to catch Scott to ask him, but he’d be home tonight. Surely.

Isaac’s eyes raised, and Stiles wondered if he knew how wide they looked. He decided not to point it out.

“Yeah?” he asked, almost disbelieving, before he straightened a little, lips twitching again, hinting at a smile that wasn’t going to show itself. “Great. I can’t tonight, but – maybe we could go after your first day in the new job?” He sounded so sickeningly hopeful that Stiles felt like a bit of an asshole for silently poking fun at him.

“Sounds good. We can get drunk and laugh about how horrible I’m gonna be at this,” he joked, grinning. “I’ll let you know, yeah? God knows I’m gonna be stuck in this office til Monday. You can keep me company, keep me from dying of boredom.”

There. That had to be nicer than he’d been acting, didn’t it? A little, at least. Isaac looked happy enough with the offer, the ghost-smile flickering before he let it go entirely.

“As long as associating with you doesn’t bring Talia down on my ass. I fix her computer, she likes me. I’m not risking losing that rarity,” he countered, and his voice was so light that that could only be a joke. Jeez. What was going on? Lahey was making jokes, Derek was giving him rides to and from work. Stiles was increasingly becoming the most unpleasant person in the office.

He didn’t like that. He’d have to change it.

“Sycophant,” he shot back, before waving his hand dismissively. “Go on, go fix computers. I have to _study_. And figure out whether my suit’s nice enough for this weird job,” he mumbled to himself, turning back to the sheets of paper just waiting for him to soak up their information. Isaac made that half-laugh noise again, and returned to his own desk.

It was only when he felt eyes on him that he looked up again. Derek was staring right at him, as though he’d grown a second head. He looked away when he met Stiles’ eyes, looking bizarrely – embarrassed.

If Stiles wasn’t trying so hard not to be an asshole, he would have called the guy out on it. But he _was_ trying not to be an asshole, because, yeah, he knew he could be kind of a dick at the best of times, and it seemed to be brought out in him when he got jealous. Derek, apart from being weirdly gruff and rude sometimes and a total enigma, hadn’t really done anything to warrant asshole behaviour.

He put his own head down, too, letting himself become noticeably more interested in the material he’d been given. While it seemed weird to him that he’d be put on this detail, he had to admit, once he started profiling all these guys, paired with the knowledge that they knew all about werewolves too, well, it got interesting.

He did notice that they were mostly older white, rich guys he was going to be talking to, which he supposed made sense, because he was a young white guy who could very well _be_ rich in the future, if he worked hard enough, and he’d relate to them. Except they sounded like pricks, all of them against any kind of progressive change. Hell, if they didn’t want people of colour and _women_ their basic rights, they sure as fuck wouldn’t take kindly to dealing with a pack of animals who could very well knock them off their totem poles at the top if they wanted.

He was surprised to see a few women on the list, though, even if they didn’t seem to be much better. Most surprising, and he could acknowledge that this was totally because of his own bias, was that not all of them were Republicans. At least half were Democrats, and a good chunk were Independents. Each file had a red flag beside it, which Stiles suspected he meant that they were the ones he’d have to work on charming.

He didn’t even realise how much time he’d spent committing this stuff to memory -- because when he committed to a job, he _committed_ to the job – until he heard someone clear their throat above him, and there was mountain man Hale, looking down at him with a scowl.

“It’s quarter past five,” he said, and fuck, did he look grumpy. Stiles’ eyes flitted to the clock, and he looked back guilty. Right, yeah, Derek had told him five and don’t be late. And here he was. Late. And being _collected_ like a little kid.

“Uh,” he said awkwardly, rubbing at the back of his neck. At least he did feel bad about it. “Sorry, man. I didn’t even realise what time it was. Thanks for waiting?” he added, offering up a half-smile he hoped wouldn’t get him clawed to death.

Derek eyed him for a second, before turning on his heel and leaving, the only suggestion that he was still waiting for Stiles, the little glance over his shoulder to make sure the human was scrambling up and gathering his stuff together to rush after him.

He really didn’t want to risk losing his ride, even if it was silent and awkward, because riding in that _sweet_ Camaro was way better than walking home, so he jogged a little to catch up to Derek, sliding into the passenger seat and dumping his bag by his feet, the papers squashed in haphazardly in a way that ensured they’d be bent when he took them out.

Derek shot him a quick look, and it might have been irritation, or it might just have been the way his face formed, but Stiles felt suitably chastened either way.

“Look, dude, I really am sorry about being late, I didn’t realise,” he said after a moment, deciding even his own unnecessary words filling up the car was better than just listening to the engine and the sound of the heater (again, already on, the car toasty).

“What did Mom want?” Derek said abruptly, in what Stiles supposed he thought was an acceptable response. Well, the guy was talking, so that had to count as some sort of an accepted apology, right? He cleared his throat, and tried to work out how best to phrase it without sounding like a dick.

“She wants me to work on getting the budget fixed,” he settled finally, letting a little of the enthusiasm that had come from reading about – what he was now calling characters, because that made it way more interesting, he was like a regular little Josh Lyman with his influence here – and working out how to manipulate them seep into his voice.

“You know. With Congress and stuff. Senators, and like, dudes with money,” he added for clarification when Derek stayed quiet. It seemed the explanation was unnecessary, because Derek scoffed, and it sounded almost as nasty as when Stiles did it.

“She asked _you_?” he asked, and Stiles decided in a second he _didn’t_ like the amount of incredulity in the wolf’s voice. Bristling and puffing up in a way that, yeah, might have too much to do with hanging out with a pack of wolves, Stiles nodded.

“ _Yes_ , she asked me. Or, more like told me. She ordered me. And I didn’t ignore it this time! Progress, right?” He resisted the urge to nudge Derek playfully, under the suspicion that he might lose the arm if he tried.

Rather than look even halfway amused like Stiles might have anticipated, Derek stiffened, like he’d realised something, and Stiles could see his eyes narrow and harden.

“Uncle Peter,” he said, voice edged with something that sounded an awful lot like hate. He didn’t see the need to _elaborate_ on that, apparently, letting a silence fall between them that Stiles was left to fill. Naturally.

“Uh. Yeah. Uncle Peter. The di- guy in the suit,” he corrected himself hastily. “Your Mom wants me to work with him.”

“ _Why_?” The word was harsh and barked out, like Derek wanted it out of his mouth as quickly as possible. Slightly taken aback by the _ferocity_ of this seeming disapproval, Stiles tried to keep his cool, and looked down so any expression on the wolf’s face wouldn’t set him off.

“You’d have to ask her, dude, I don’t know,” he answered, voice a little quieter than usual. He did have some self-preservation instincts, and if acting a little more like a scared human stopped him from getting his _face_ torn off, well, then, he could do that. It wasn’t like it was exactly a lie. 

Derek stayed quiet for a long moment, and Stiles thought he might well have pissed him off to the point of speechlessness, and hey, that would have been record timing. He kept his own mouth shut, looking down at his feet rather than trying to fill this silence. He liked words and words liked him and he didn’t much like silence, but he wasn’t dumb. All that much.

“Be careful. He’s not trustworthy,” Derek said finally, after a full two whole minutes of silence. (Stiles counted). His face looked a little strained as he spoke, and Stiles had to wonder whether or not that was the strain of making himself speak to Stiles again, or whether that flicker of hate from his voice was trying to manifest on his features.

“Uh. Isn’t he your Uncle..?” he ventured carefully. Apart from totally being believable, because the guy _really_ did look snaky in his impeccably cut suit, Stiles was pretty sure the Hales were big on family loyalty. Declaiming one of their own as untrustworthy was a bit – different.

“Yes,” the other man snapped, fingers flexing around the steering wheel. “And I’m telling you to be careful. Only be around him when you have to, and don’t trust him,” he added, mouth twisting. Stiles didn’t have that built-in lie detector, but he’d gotten pretty good at working out when someone was being deceitful. Derek looked pretty serious about what he was saying.

“Um. OK. I mean, I’m just happy to have a job that pays, because we’re so broke it’s not funny, and I really wanna be able to get Scotty a present this year, so – not like I can say to no a job?” he replied unsurely.  He doubted Derek would understand the motivation – it was common knowledge that the Hales were _rolling_ in money – but he could hope for some empathy. Ha. Empathy. From Hale. Funny.

“Just be careful,” Derek reiterated, and it may totally have been in Stiles’ head, but he could have sworn the guy’s voice softened just a little. He nodded, taking that as a victory, and seeing as Derek was maybe using more syllables than Stiles thought he ever did with anyone else, decided it couldn’t hurt to try for a few more.

“OK. Will do. Thanks. So, I had to ask you something, actually. I have to restore my bat back to full strength, even though … I guess I won’t really be using it…” he trailed off then, the realisation that he’d been properly taken off field work hitting him hard. The whole reason he’d _wanted_ this job was to be able to work with Scott and use his magic, and be _doing_ something. But Derek was probably still waiting for him to continue, so he cleared his throat and pushed away the little stab of loss that shouldn’t really have stung so much. (It did nonetheless).

“Anyway. Yeah. I need wolfsbane, and some other stuff, and I was wondering if you’d be able to hook me up,” he finished hastily, trying his best to look unaffected.

“Make me a list,” Derek answered almost immediately, no hesitation in his voice whatsoever. Huh. OK. That was – nice.

“Oh. Yeah, I can do that. Thanks, man,” he said warmly, pleasantly surprised. He’d been expecting to have to maybe beg and grovel a little, offer up something in return, but this worked even better.

“You want me to do something for you?” he asked despite the selfish side of him telling to shut up and just take what he was being given. Nope. Didn’t seem like a nice thing to do to take and not even offer to give. And he was trying to be _nice_.

Derek looked pretty damn surprised though, actually taking his eyes off the road to glance at Stiles, clear, wide-eyed shock on his face.  It was a little odd to see his features open up so much, though decidedly _nice_ ; wow, that scruff worked for the guy. 

“As a thank you,” Stiles added hurriedly, in case the other man didn’t, you know, _grasp_ the concept of human decency. Which he would have thought was entirely possible a few days ago, but he was being forced to reconsider that now.

“Don’t call Isaac weird again,” he said finally, after a long moment of what looked like some _intense_ deliberation. Stiles could practically see his mind working over. “Please.”

Well, OK, totally not at all what he’d been expecting, and a little embarrassing, actually, because he didn’t realise Derek had even heard that. He deflated a little, guilt surging. Jeez, he needed to get this asshole behaviour under control.

“Um. Yeah. Sorry. I don’t really … think before I speak,” he muttered, cheeks heating up. True. He never thought before he spoke, and if Derek had heard his offhand little comment, it probably meant the other wolf had, too. Shit.

“I didn’t know you knew him,” he added, and this time, his voice was quiet for real, soft and meek with his own shame. Derek made a half-grunt kind of a noise, apparently his form of acknowledgment.

“We’re friends,” he said shortly, and it was clear that that was all he was going to offer up on _that_ front. Stiles nodded, filing that information away for future consideration.

“Right. Well, I’m going out with him for a drink soon … so I’ll apologise.”

If he thought he caught a flicker of surprise, it disappeared as quickly as it would have appeared, and Derek nodded, quiet again. Stiles waited for another remark, but it looked like that was all the talking they were going to end up doing for today. Well. Not a totally bad effort, he had to admit.

He thought that by the time they reached his apartment he was getting used to the weird silence in the car, retreating into his own mind. It was only when he realised the car had stopped moving that he snapped back to attention, dragging his bag up.

“Thanks, Derek,” he said, swinging the door open. “See you tomorrow?"

“Fine.” Not particularly warm or fuzzy, but it wasn’t an irritated snap, either, so Stiles counted that one as a victory as he climbed out and headed inside.

“Have a nice night!” he called back over his shoulder, but the Camaro was already peeling away from the curb.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is really remarkably much later than I wanted, but hey, here it is. Enjoy. As always, I spend most of my time over on tumblr.


	4. Chapter 4

The apartment was nicer than Scott’s, but that was only to be expected. Actually, to be honest, he kind of loved taking advantage of how gorgeous Allison’s place was. Though he might have teased the hell out of her about it, they both knew that even if she’d wanted to, there was no way she would ever have been allowed to live anywhere else. She was an _Argent_ , of course she was going to have a luxurious three bed apartment by the Hill.

The great thing about it, actually, was that he could light candles. It might have been his favourite thing in fact, because he could light as many as he wanted and not have to worry about setting off the sprinklers. As it turned out, the other inhabitants of their building didn’t take too kindly to being drenched in the middle of the night. Stiles from that point on was _not_ allowed to experiment with spells in the apartment.

But here, he could do what he liked. And what he was doing tonight was endeavouring to be the adult that he was. He’d seen Allison two days previous, but really, all they’d done was tumble into bed together, and there wasn’t a whole lot of talking exchanged in between. He wanted to talk this time. Needed to, actually, because this was serious, so he was going to act like it was. He was going to cook dinner for the both of them, like a mature adult, and sit down with the woman and discuss the fact that they really needed to stop keeping this secret.

That was the _plan_. It didn’t exactly go accordingly. He’d had every surface of the apartment covered in lit candles, the lights dimmed, because even if Allison made fun of him for it, and she _did_ , it was worth to see the surprised, pleased grin on her face the moment she walked in the door. Of course, she was so pleased that she ended up throwing herself at him, and who was he to say no to that?

In retrospect? He should have said no to that. Not that he was complaining, lying here beside her, the both of them slowly trying to catch their breath, chests rising and falling almost in sync. The candles had definitely been a good idea, because their dying lights flickered over Allison’s skin, making the sticky sheen to it seem slick and shining. Her hair was splayed out behind her haphazardly, undoubtedly tangled, and she’d kicked the covers off her, too hot for them, every inch of skin on display just for him.

His head had lolled to the side, and he knew that the expression he was watching her with had to be one of absolute, giddy adoration that he would no doubt be mocked for. He couldn’t really find it in himself to care. They should probably have showered, _separately_ , because they wouldn’t end up clean if they went in together, and eat the food before it went completely cold. Scott opened his mouth to say so, but that wasn’t quite what came out.

“I want to tell them.”

Which is what he’d been planning on saying at the dinner table, reasonably and rationally, and make his case as to why it wouldn’t be such a bad thing. He’d wanted to act like an adult about it, but here he was, lying in post-orgasmic bliss, blurting it out like the teenager he’d been not so long ago. His words seemed to have broken the happy trance Allison was in, and her face crumpled into a frown. He regretted the words immediately.

“Scott, you know why we can’t do that. We’ve talked about this,” she sighed, and he didn’t need to be a werewolf to hear the underlying frustration in her voice.

“No, OK, I know we have, but I just really don’t think it would be _that_ bad. If we just come clean, and tell them we’re in love, then what can they really do? It’s our lives. And Stiles is starting to get really pissy about me never being home and stuff,” he reasoned, trying not to sound too childish.

“Scott. Look. You’re not getting it. I know Talia took you in and you think the world of her, she’s your Alpha, I _get_ it. But my family and theirs? Have history. And that’s not going away. They’re not … all good like you think they are.” She paused there, her eyes darkening, and Scott knew she was recalling what had happened to her mother.

“Things would not be good if they found out, I know they wouldn’t. Can we please just … leave it secret for now? I just, this is the only place I can really be _myself_ , with you, and I love you. They’d try to take that away, and I just won’t _let_ them.”  Her face is so set in determination, she looks every bit the hunter she is. Sometimes it frightens Scott. Mostly it just leaves him in awe.

He should argue the point a little more. He’d really wanted to tell them, _really_ wanted to. He wasn’t great at secrets. It just wasn’t in his nature to keep things from the people he loved. If he had to keep a secret for the betterment of the community, which he knew was what his job involved, that was fine. Cool. He could do that. But lying to Stiles? It sucked. Because Stiles was gradually getting more fed up with seeing his best friend slowly drift further away.

Thing was, he wasn’t great at arguing with Allison, either. Not because she scared him (she only scared him on occasion, and it was a fiercely proud kind of fear), but because he could see it upset her, and his whole mission in life was to keep her from getting hurt. He was pretty sure, anyway. He was madly in love; that much he knew.

“A while longer,” he conceded finally. Giving in, he knew, but when it earned him a wide smile and the visible relief flowing out of Allison’s pores, he could handle a little giving in. Rolling over to kiss him, Allison’s heart rate returned to normal, and Scott knew he’d done the right thing. For now at least. They’d have to tell everyone sooner or later, because he fully intended on marrying this woman.

“C’mon. You’ve made me work up an appetite,” she murmured against his lips, and it took every inch of his willpower not to flip her over and start all over again.

* * *

_[Derek Hale: 6.45pm]_

_Tell Mom I made humanly contact. I want to come for dinner._

_[Laura Hale: 6.51pm]_

_Embarrassing her in front of everyone you work with over some kid you wanna bone doesn’t count as humanly contact, but fine, you can come. We eat at seven. Your ass better be here, little brother._

Not the kindest concession he could have received, but he’d take what he could get. He still hadn’t been reprimanded over that incident, and he knew it had to happen sooner or later. He _had_ disrespected his Alpha, and he knew that didn’t just come away lightly. Dinner seemed like a good enough time to face it, especially when he had ulterior motives.

Any other time, he might have thought about bringing Isaac with him to finally meet his family properly, to ingratiate him within the pack. But tonight wasn’t the night for it, and even if it had been, Isaac had his second weekly dinner with his father. He’d refused a second time around to miss it.

Derek knew he ought to be doing something about both those problems. Isaac had been his for coming on a full six months now, and he still hadn’t made him feel welcome within his own family. He was being a bad Alpha about that, he knew, and it wasn’t what Talia had gifted him with the power for. She’d wanted to give him some purpose in his life. He’d drifted after the fire. Badly. The Alpha power was supposed to serve as a guide, allow him to build his own family. He’d had it for seven years and had never bitten anyone until Isaac. Maybe that was why he was so hesitant to share him. Isaac was something special, just for him. He could keep him that way just a little longer.

He left the first aid kit on the bench as he left, just in case he wasn’t home in time.

He didn’t bother knocking, just let himself in, and was immediately hit with the wall of scent that he wasn’t ashamed to say he’d missed. The smell of family, Talia and Laura’s scents intermingled, pack, as well as the rich, wafting scent of roasting meat. All werewolves craved meat more so than humans, but they’d used to joke that Derek was truly a carnivore. The scents were a comfort, and an ache. But he chose to focus on the brighter side, for once.

It had been strange, not coming to family dinner. He was a grown man, he didn’t _need_ to, but it had been a tradition begun after the fire. A way to keep them close, and a way to keep an eye on Derek, he was sure. He didn’t mind. He loved his family. That was always going to be true.

“Well, look who crawled back on in,” came a voice from behind him, and while Derek had time to duck, he let Laura wind her arms around his neck tight, draping herself over him from behind. Forever fucking smug that she towered over him.

“You’re the one who kicked me out,” he grumbled in way of greeting, but made no move to shove her away. She’d only cling tighter anyway. It was always better to let her peel off at her own pace. She lingered a moment, before ruffling a hand through his hair and circling him slowly.

“ _You’re_ the one who can’t make any friends. Gotta give you a little push every now and then or you’ll end up lonely and antisocial forever,” she shot back, smirking when he scowled, crossing his arms. They might be adults, the both of them, but it didn’t mean they didn’t revert to childhood around each other.

“Leave him alone, he spoke to someone.”

Derek had never been so glad to hear his mother’s voice. (He had, when she’d desperately reassured him over the phone just minutes after the fire that she was alive, she was coming to get him.) Talia stepped out of the kitchen, laying a hand on his arm and kissing his cheek.

“He spoke to the boy I was publicly disciplining and undermined me in front of the office, but he spoke,” she added, voice growing sterner as she watched him. There it was. He ducked his head, purely out of habit, respect born in him long ago.    

“Sorry, Mom,” he murmured. She let the silence hang between them for a moment, letting him know that she wasn’t happy, but smiled a moment after, pressing him down into a seat at the table.

“Next time you have an issue, take it with up me in private, alright?” she replied. He thought it would have been a particularly bad idea to point out that he’d wanted her to stop reaming the kid out in front of the office, and had had to step in like that. That would only have got his forgiveness revoked.

Laura slid into the seat across from him while Talia retrieved dinner, watching him with a sly expression he knew not to trust. He let her stare for a moment, before snapping, and ultimately giving in to what she wanted.

“Got something to say, Laura?”

Her mouth spread into a wide grin, wolfish, with her teeth bared, and he immediately regretted asking.   Things never ended well for him when that smile came out. He looked immediately down into his plate when Talia set it front of him, focusing on the food rather than the fact that Laura looked positively gleeful.

“Why don’t you tell us about the fact that you’ve been playing taxicab for Stilinski?” she asked, voice full of mock innocence. His mouth twisted into a scowl at the same moment that Talia’s features opened up in surprise, brows raised.

“Have you, Derek? That’s unlike you.”

“ _Yeah_ , it’s unlike him, he never lets anyone in the Camaro. He must be _special_.”

“I’m sure your brother’s just making friends, Laura. There’s no need to – “

“Oh, please, have you seen that kid? He’s a yappy little dog that Derek would normally kick away, there’s no way he doesn’t wanna fu-“

“Hey!”

The table fell silent, his voice louder than was polite echoing around the room, his knuckles white around his knife and fork.

“For one thing, it’s none of your business, Laura, I don’t even know how you know about it. And his car died. He needed a ride, that’s it. So shut up.” His voice was barely above a growl, which should have been warning enough. The two women remained quiet for a few more moments, the only sound the clink of cutlery against china, and Derek thought he’d succeeded in shutting them the hell up.

“Is he pretty, Derek? Bring him home, I wanna meet him if you’re screwing around,” Laura said finally, her voice quieter but no less pleased with herself.

“Back the fuck off, Laura,” he snarled, his eyes flashing red for a glimmer of a second. It didn’t matter how quick it was, the two wolves had seen it, and he instantly felt ashamed. It was just bad manners to lose control at the table. He hadn’t done that in a very long time.

“For god’s sake. Laura, leave your brother alone. Derek, I’ll thank you not to shout at the dinner table,” Talia sighed, exasperated. They all knew what ‘shout’ meant.

“Why do you still bicker like children?” she added tiredly, and the lines around her eyes seemed to deepen, her head cradled in a hand propped up against the table. Derek immediately shut his mouth, looking down, quiet. Mercifully, Laura stayed quiet, too. Mutual, silent understanding not to upset their mother any further. Derek might have carried the burden of the guilt for what he’d done to her, but Laura had taken a chunk off his shoulders and wore it on her own.

He ate quietly for a few minutes, wondering whether or not he should even bring up what he’d come here to discuss. It might only upset Talia even more, but it was important, and he needed to address it sooner or later.

“Mom, why are you making Stilinski work with Uncle Peter?” he asked tentatively, careful to keep any accusation out of his voice. Only a small sliver managed to creep in.

There was a small clatter as Laura dropped her fork in surprise, looking up. Talia maintained her grace, though. She could have set down her cutlery and answered the both of them seriously, but she chose to continue on as if the question wasn’t one that would have both her children pissed off and hating her.

“I think he can be useful,” she answered carefully. “Peter isn’t doing so well with the budget, he has his limitations. I think Stiles will be a very charming young man, and perhaps he can get us somewhere with the humans. Do you have a problem with that?” Her voice was firm, and Derek knew that wasn’t a question. He paused, before crumbling, shaking his head and keeping his eyes downcast.

“I have a problem with it,” Laura said, her voice barely above a murmur. Derek looked up, and wasn’t surprised to see anger written plain over her face. When she got quiet, she was either very upset, or very angry, or both. Given that he could see fear lurking behind her eyes, he assumed it was both this time around.

“You want to send a kid to work with _him_? Alone?” She never said his name anymore.

“Laura, I’ve made my decision. Honestly, there’s not going to be any danger, sweetheart. They’re talking politics, they’re not attacking covens. He’ll be fine.” That was bullshit, and Derek suspected everyone sat at the table knew it. He stayed quiet.

“He’s not going to be _fine_ , he’s a kid, Mom! Fucking hell, open your goddamn eyes,” Laura spat out. It was only Derek’s instinct that allowed him to remain quiet out of respect for his mother. Laura was skirting some serious lines. He didn’t blame her. If he’d been stronger, he would have too.

“Watch your tone,” Talia warned, but there was no real heat or order behind the words. She’d lost this fight, and she knew it. Laura stood abruptly, her chair scraping back against the floor, and she stalked out of the room much like she did when she was a teenager, slamming the door behind her. Difference was, this time around, she had a legitimate reason to be upset.

It left the air in an awkward kind of silence, and Derek could see the regret written all over Talia’s face. Good. He hoped she regretted it, however much he loved her. He loved Laura too, and Laura was the one in the right here. He cleaned his plate in that same silence, not quite strong enough to tell his mother she was being ridiculous, but not happy enough to try to comfort her, either.

“Go on, then, go and see her,” she told him finally, looking completely and utterly defeated. He’d learned not to question how she seemed to always know what he wanted, without him needing to say a word. He stood, taking her plate and his to the sink, before pausing for a moment, the thick of the air changing just a little. He could smell his mother’s anxiety, souring the scent of the room.

Sighing heavily, and thinking somewhat vaguely that it was better that he hadn’t brought Isaac tonight, not when they were so out of sorts with one another, he moved to leave the room and find Laura, stopping only to lean down behind his mother and press a kiss to her cheek in return, uncharacteristic for him.

Laura was sat in the very middle of her bed, in the room that she refused to call hers, because then it looked like a grown woman still lived with her mother, even if she stayed over some nights. Her legs were wrapped around her knees, pulled up to her chest, and she was staring at the wall quietly.

“She just doesn’t understand,” he said in way of greeting, closing the door behind him with a quiet click, and sitting across from her, legs crossed. He felt like a little kid again. While he knew that Talia wouldn’t have been listening in anyway, that was unspeakably rude amongst family, he kept his voice hushed nonetheless.

“She’s being _stupid_ ,” Laura shot back, voice hard. Her eyes matched it. “She knows what he’s like, and she wants to send a kid to work with him? He could do anything.”

Derek’s worries, exactly. Stiles sure seemed like he knew how to defend himself from magical threats, supernatural and the like, he’d proved himself with that coven, but Peter was a different brand entirely.  Peter didn’t need his claws or his fangs to do damage, he could do it all with a well-placed smile and a few smooth words.

“I know. I’m not happy about it either. But she just – she loves him, you know. He’s her brother, the only one she has left,” he tried to explain, his voice growing bitter. His fault. So much of it was his fault. “It blinds her.”

Laura stayed quiet for a few moments, listening. She didn’t grow any less angry, but her face softened, and she looked less fearsome. More fearful, though, which wasn’t any better. The Laura he’d grown up knowing, his big sister, hadn’t been scared of anything. She was ruthless and brave, always the first to do anything for her baby siblings and lead the way. She was meant to be Alpha when Talia died, but after the – _accident_ – they’d all agreed giving Derek the power was preferable. It was a shame, sometimes. He knew she would have been amazing. Unlike him.

“Does it still hurt?” he asked tentatively after a moment. It was a sensitive question, and he used the same tone he did when he was younger and asking about something like how it felt to shift for the first time, or what her secret Alpha lessons were like with Mom.

“Like a bitch sometimes,” she answered with a grimace. She seemed to pause before making up her mind, lifting her shirt and leaning forward to reveal the jagged, ugly scar that ran the length of her stomach, ending just before it reached the other side. He sucked in a breath, reaching out to brush his fingers over the rough skin. None of them had scars, except those gained from wolves stronger. And this was gained from a wolf much stronger.

“I just wish Mom would look at this and see what really happened,” Laura whispered. There was far too much sadness in her voice for Derek to be OK with. Talia was their mother, their Alpha, for all her faults, but this was a huge fault.

No one had believed Laura when they’d found her, damn fucking cut in _half_. Dying. It had been a close thing. They’d found drugs in her blood at the hospital, wolfsbane, and her claims that it had been Peter to hurt her, try to kill her, had been discarded as hallucinations. She’d been drugged, in pain, and confused. Uncle Peter would never try to harm his own family. Derek believed her. He didn’t know that anyone else did.

“I believe you,” he said firmly. He’d said it a hundred times over, but she always needed it once more. She smiled, a little shaky, before her features hardened again, this time in determination.

“Look after that kid, alright. Don’t let anything happen to him.” It seemed to be more of a plea than an order, but he would have done so either way. He nodded, pulling his hand back and letting her shirt fall back down.

“Yeah, I will. Promise. Gonna keep my eye on things. I don’t trust Peter. Not for a second.” He had trusted the man, once, when he was still the funny Uncle who let them do the shit Talia never let them do, but he’d changed. Once he’d woken from those burns, he was _different_.

Sniffing, not quite a _sniffle_ , but not quite not one either, Laura nudged him gently with her foot, playful again.

“Sorry for teasing you about the guy. I don’t care if you like him, just make sure you keep him safe. And bring him home if it turns into anything,” she said with a small grin. He was tempted to smack her, but he’d come off worse in that fight, so he kept his hands to himself.

“I’d stay, but Isaac’s at home,” he said after a moment. He did want to stay, really, to make sure Laura was alright, fend off the fear that still lingered at the corners of her features, but Isaac needed him more right now. He hated not being there when the kid came home from those dinners.

“No, it’s OK, go look after your boy,” Laura dismissed, waving her hand. “Bring him around one of these days, alright, Der? We wanna meet him. _Properly_.”

He nodded, only a little guilty this time around for keeping Isaac all to himself, and resisted the urge to hug her, hauling his long limbs out from underneath him, and sliding off the bed.

“Don’t let Mom get to you. And you know. If … nightmares. Call me.”

“Yeah, little brother.”

* * *

Air thick with tension. The scrape of cutlery over glass plates that break easily when thrown. Isaac sat at the end of the table across from his father, silent, looking down and eating as quietly as possible.

“You were late.”

“I know, Dad. I’m really sorry, the bus was late. It won’t happen again.”

More silence. He thought maybe the answer was good enough for the anger to have passed, but no such luck. He was never lucky in this place.

“Why don’t you have a car yet? If you had a car, you wouldn’t be _late_.”

“I can’t afford one, Dad, all my money goes on rent and food.”

That was the truth, too. He was working two jobs just to ensure that he contributed enough to Derek’s pool of money, and any spare money he had went on food for himself, because Derek couldn’t cook for him _all_ the time. Even if he claimed to like it.

“You’re not working hard enough. If you were still living here, you wouldn’t need a car.”

“I like living where I am, Dad. I’ll work harder.”

It might have been Isaac’s imagination, but he thought that the other man’s fork scraped the plate particularly hard that time, and he winced very slightly, keeping his own eyes downcast.

“You belong here, not halfway across town.”

“I like where I am, Dad. I like being independent, I’m a grown up now, you know? I just – like my own space, I like living with Derek.”

Mistake. Big mistake. He’d known the second Derek’s name slipped from his lips that he’d fucked up. If there was anything that riled his father up, it was the mention of the man who had taken Isaac out of this place. He froze, waiting, half-chewed food in his mouth as his heart jumped up in there as well.

A scoff. Mouth twisted like he was going to spit.

“Just like your brother. Ungrateful _brat_ left here to get himself blown up. Left me on my own, with _you_ , you think I wanted that? And now you’ve left me too, for that – unnatural thing. You a fag, like him?”

The words were spat out like venom, and Isaac could feel the burn of them on his skin. If he looked down at his arms, he thought he might see melting flesh. The mention of Camden had his blood boiling, though, and coupled with the mention of Derek, he could feel the familiar rise of his wolf wanting to lash out. His control wasn’t perfect, but he managed to reign it in.

“No, Dad. I just like living with him.”

Another scoff, an ugly scrape of metal to glass that had Isaac wincing properly now.

“Think it’s about time you moved your ass back here.”

“No.”

Silence. The worst kind. The kind that froze the room, that pierced into Isaac’s bones and made him shiver. This kind of silence preceded the kind that fell, cold and heavy, when he got shoved into – no. He wasn’t going to think about that.

“What did you say to me, boy?”

Isaac looked up, terrified, and fully intended on rescinding the word immediately, pouring out an apology. He couldn’t get any bruises tonight, he wanted to meet Scott and Stiles tomorrow night and look like a normal guy.

“No.”

Second mistake of the night, and he hadn’t even meant to make it. He hadn’t given permission for that to even escape his own head, however much he might have thought it. But if his wolf couldn’t come out, then apparently his filter gave out. One or the other. This was better than the alternative.

He didn’t even see his father stand, only knew that one moment he was sitting stiff and still in his chair at the end of the table, and the next, he was hunched over, cheek dripping with blood. Glass clattered onto the table, and he looked down at it in shock, his fingers coming up automatically to dip into the cut, coming away bloody. He shouldn’t be shocked. So glass is something new. It’s not that much different from the back of a hand.

“Dad, I’m – “

And then he met the back of a hand, smacking him off his seat and onto the floor, hitting the boards with a _thump_.

“You do what I tell you, boy, understood? And I tell you to come _home_.”

He curled up, trying to protect his ribs from any potential blow, nodding, but when he glanced up, just for a second, and saw the sole of his father’s boot heading right for him, something triggered his wolf, begging to protect itself, and he leapt sideways and up, forming a fist and knocking his father back a good few feet, stumbling. He was just glad, through the haze of panic, that his claws stayed where they were, or he’d be well and truly caught out.

He was out the door in seconds, not bothering to look back and see if he was being pursued. He wouldn’t be _caught_. His instincts were guiding him now more than anything, the fear triggering them. He’d joked to himself privately that once he was turned, it was like he had a homing beacon inside of him, because anytime he got too frightened or angry, and his wolf took over, he went straight to Derek.

And that was exactly where he was going now. Straight to Derek. His feet carried him swiftly, his mind barely comprehending where they were taking him, over gravelled roads and pathways, past curious onlookers. Past his bus stop, where he’d walk from to get to his father’s house. (Not his home, not anymore, Derek was his home now).

He was just lucky he hadn’t shifted. If he’d shifted, all hell would have broken loose. Not only would his father have seen, but as he was running, civilians would see too, and he owed the Hales, all of them, too much to jeopardise everything he knew they worked for. Not when it had been his own fault that he’d said the wrong thing and set his father off.

He was at the loft quicker than he knew it, and was surprised to find just _how much_ it felt like home, now, especially when he needed the refuge of home. He was also surprised to find it empty. He realised after a second that Derek had gone to family dinner, too, his own family, which he doubted was as awful as his own, and that he probably hadn’t returned yet.

The loft was empty, and he was alone.

It wasn’t a nice feeling.

But it couldn’t be helped. He locked the door behind him, over and again to ensure it stayed locked, before stepping inside properly, trying to drain a little of his fear that still lingered. He was headed to the bathroom, when he spotted the first aid kit on the bench, and felt a sudden rush of gratitude for the other wolf. _His_ wolf ached for him.

Grabbing the kit and stepping into the bathroom, he toed off his shoes and socks, bare feet against the cool tile grounding him. If only a little. Derek had taught him to grasp onto the little things to keep him anchored. Sometimes they were the only thing that kept him in control. Slumping down onto the floor, he breathed heavy, finally letting himself acknowledge how much his face hurt, not to mention his leg where he’d landed on it. He didn’t realise just how long he sat there, motionless.

* * *

Derek had tried his hardest to make it home in time for Isaac, but he figured that the boy would probably have made it home alright on his own. He was a man, a grown up, not a boy, even if Derek still thought of him as such. So much younger than him, after all.

He unlocked the front door, slotting the key into the lock and twisting smoothly, stepping inside and yawning. Seeing his family always exhausted him. He was expecting to hear Isaac’s heartbeat like he always did, somewhere from within the recesses of the loft, but he wasn’t expecting the pitter-patter to be threefold too fast, thumping loud in Derek’s ears.

Kicking off his boots at the door, he rushed to the source of the sound, vaguely noticing out of the corner of his eye that the kit was gone from the bench. So it was one of those nights.

The bathroom was the only place Isaac would have gone, really, even if he didn’t have the sound to guide him. That, or Derek’s bedroom. He suspected his own scent soaked into his sheets was a comfort.

“Isaac?” he called out tentatively, knocking on the closed door. He knew to knock now, always, or else the kid freaked out and tried to hide his injuries. It only made it all the harder for Derek to tend to them. He waited for a sign of admission, for Isaac to respond, but all he was met with was an increase in his heart rate, and silence otherwise.

Truthfully, he probably ought to have backed off then, and let the Beta be, let him lick his own wounds, but he couldn’t quite let it go, his instincts pulling to protect his own. He waited a second longer before opening the door, hand on the knob and turning quickly. He refused to have a lock on the door. On any of the doors but the front. He wanted to be able to get in in situations like this, and he remembered all too well the panic of being a teenager and trying to break down locked doors with smoke billowing around him, cries seeping through the wood.

No locks. Not in his home.

Isaac was sat on the floor, slumped between the cabinet and the shower, looking at the wall almost lazily. Like he wasn’t even aware of Derek’s presence, though Derek knew he had to have been, because of the jump in his heart rate. His face was what drew Derek’s attention, though. His cheek was smeared with blood, both still trickling fresh and drying, and the beginning of a large, purpling bruise blossomed over the same side of his face. He’d seen the kid’s bruises, but never this bad.

“Fucking hell,” he muttered under his breath, trying his utmost not to flip out and go and _destroy_ the boy’s father. For one thing, he’d lose Isaac if he did that. And for another, he didn’t want to kill another single person in his life, even if they were scum.

Dropping to his knees in front of Isaac, he knelt before him, keeping a careful distance to ensure he wouldn’t be lashed out at. He could do without his own wounds, however quickly they might heal.

“Hey. What happened?” he asked gently, leaning in to ensure his face was close to Isaac’s, giving him no choice but to acknowledge him.  

Isaac seemed hesitant to speak at first, but Derek could be patient, and he waited for the other man to fill the silence, falling back onto his ass against the tile, brushing their knees together just slightly.

“I fucked up.”

The answer was very quiet, and his voice was guilt-laden. Derek felt anger spike up again, but he suppressed it. It wouldn’t help anyone right now, it would only make things worse. All he could do right now was listen, and try to ensure that his wounds healed smoothly. Much as he detested that feeling of helplessness.

Sighing softly, Derek’s shoulders slumped in defeat, and he leaned over to drag the kit closer to him. It looked untouched. He thought Isaac had probably brought it in with the intention of taking care of himself. He must have panicked. Derek wondered how long he’d been sitting here.

“You wanna talk about it?” he asked after a minute of silence, taking a disinfected wipe and swabbing it gently over the cuts. Isaac winced, but he didn’t pull away, letting Derek do as he liked. There was a hell of a lot of trust there, and Derek had to be a little proud of himself for gaining it.

“My Dad,” he answered finally. Derek thought he wasn’t going to _get_ an answer, but that was OK. He paused, his hand hovering over Isaac’s cheek, the wipe now discoloured with rose-pale blood against white. This was the first time Isaac was actually admitting it. Huh. It must have gone worse than Derek thought.

“Yeah?” he replied, clearing his throat. They both knew that Derek already knew about what went on, but he wouldn’t point that out. It would be cruel.

“He told me to come home.”

He couldn’t help sucking in a breath, then, because the idea of losing Isaac now was tantamount to losing – _everything_. Isaac was the first real beginning of his own family, his own pack, after so fucking long of just refusing to have one.

“I told him no,” Isaac added, looking up from beneath his lashes, almost like he was looking for approval. Or maybe he was scared. Derek couldn’t tell which.

“Good,” he found himself saying, relief blossoming, sweet and cool. “Good, I don’t want you to go.”

That earned a smile, at least. One that looked like it must have hurt, because he winced again. Derek sat back, watching, discarding the wipe into the bin. There was nothing more he could do now. It wasn’t deep enough for stitches, and the bruise simply had to heal.

“Yeah, well. He got mad. I should have kept my mouth shut.” Isaac’s eyes flickered back down to the floor, and while Derek wanted to push for more information, he knew better than to do so. It would have been hard enough to admit it in the first place.

“I hit him,” Isaac added, his voice barely above a whisper. He sounded disgusted with himself. Derek recognised the tone. But he wouldn’t reprimand the kid for it like he knew he was expected to.

“Good.”

Isaac looked up, eyes wide, surprise painted clear over his face.

“What? But I – hurt him, and I ran away,” he protested. Derek noticed that the ugly, vibrant purple of his bruise wasn’t fading in the least.

“Don’t care,” he said firmly. “The man hurt you, you hurt him back. That’s how it works.” It was more complicated than that, actually, and he knew that better than anyone, but if this was teaching Isaac how to defend himself, how not to get hurt, then he’d be fucked if he said any different.

“You didn’t do anything wrong, Isaac. You were protecting yourself. I’m not mad. You shouldn’t be ashamed. He’s the one who should be ashamed,” he added, his voice hardening entirely against his will. He hadn’t wanted to show that he was angry, but he supposed Isaac’s wolf would have been able to sense it anyway.

“I shouldn’t have hit him,” Isaac countered after a moment of what looked like actual contemplation. Derek wanted to argue, but they’d gotten far enough with this tonight. He could keep trying.

“It’s not healing,” he pointed out, concern seeping into his voice. Isaac didn’t look surprised at all.

“Yeah. It won’t work. I don’t know why.”

Derek knew why. Isaac was blaming himself for it, and his mind wouldn’t let his body heal. Derek had done the same thing. After. He had burns all over his body, superficial and non-lethal, but painful nonetheless. They cracked open and bled and seeped pus, but he didn’t heal them. He spent more than a few days in hospital until they healed the human way.

Reaching out a hand to brush his fingers softly over the bruise, Derek leeched out what pain he could, his veins running pale grey. It wouldn’t take away any of the damage, but at least it would hurt less.

“Thanks,” Isaac muttered, more than a little shame-faced. Derek wanted to tell him over and over that it wasn’t his fault until it sunk in, but he knew it wouldn’t have much of an effect. If his body wasn’t healing, his mind would be hard to influence.

Helping the kid up off the floor, Derek let their hands linger together for a moment longer than usual, silent physical comfort than he knew spoke louder than any words he could have said, and placed the medical kit away, closing the door with a click that echoed finality. They wouldn’t be talking about it anymore tonight.

Instead, they both gravitated to bed, Derek’s bed, the both of them tired and a little mentally drained. Not for the first, and not for the last time, Derek fell asleep listening to Isaac’s heartbeat evening out, his body curled against Derek’s.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So. This is horrendously late. Because MS Word decided to delete six thousands words on me with no warning, and it took me a little while to rewrite it all. My humblest apologies. I'm hoping the New Year motivations will kick my ass into gear.


	5. Chapter 5

**CHAPTER FIVE**

Scott’s absence left him a whole lot of free time, it turned out. Stiles still wondered vaguely what the guy could have been getting up to without him, because yeah, it kind of stung that Scott was seemingly ditching him eighty percent of the time, but they were adults now. Scott could do whatever he liked. It wasn’t as if he was outright ignoring him. Stiles just had to man up and make other friends.

Yeah. Like that was gonna happen. Scott was his best (and only) friend for a reason.

The free time, though, that was alright. It left him a few peaceful, if a little lonely, evenings to cook for himself, and absorb as much information as he possibly could leading up to this gig that he was, admittedly, warming to just a little.

He still had time to immerse himself in the facts, which always helped, rather than being thrown straight on into a situation and relying on his reflexes and his magic. That, he could do, but he was always better at it well armed with knowledge. He devoured books like they were chocolate. And chocolate, well, he devoured chocolate like no one else, ever, thank you very much, and was damn proud of it. Even if it made it hard to keep up to the fitness standard Talia demanded.

So far, he’d learned that a whole bunch of the people he’d probably be meeting _had_ to be more interesting than they looked. Because even after extensive Google searches, some of them were just outright _boring_. Politicians, he’d decided, were not as exciting as the news made them out to be. Mostly, they were white-bread, trust fund babies who all attended Ivy League, got law degrees and settled down into a life of mediocre legislative bickering. Congress, included.

There were a few, though, that drew his eye. Katherine Dewitt, she was interesting, if only because the photo attached to her file made Stiles’ spine tingle, and not in a good way. She managed to look icy even in the warm setting they’d attempted. Her smile was thin, tight-lipped, and Stiles knew if she’d bared her teeth, she might have looked positively terrifying. So, not looking forward to meeting that one. But at least she’d be different.

One guy, he looked OK. Matthew Ramirez. He looked some kind of Hispanic, but Stiles couldn’t place it. He also noted that the first name was scribbled out on the file and replaced. _Mateo._ Huh. Quite a few of the files were covered in the scribbles, the handwriting smooth, flowing cursive, the likes of which Stiles had never seen before. He wondered who it belonged to, because he’d seen Talia’s, and it wasn’t hers.

He made a point of remembering each scrawl and correction, though. Most like, they were important. Something he might need if he wanted these people to like him. He guessed that the Ramirez guy had probably been ‘advised’ to anglicise his name in order to run for office. He’d scoffed at that, rather unattractively, around a mouthful of cookie, spraying crumbs over the table. It was a good place to start, though, to try to gain some sympathy. Make a point of his own minority, the way he’d been oppressed, all that shit. Or, you know. Just threaten the guy with a well-placed enchantment.

Stiles doubted that was why he’d been given the assignment.   

He’d spent a while in front of his mirror, examining his suit closely. It wasn’t that old, and he guessed for a non-tailored suit, it was passable. He didn’t look awful. It was _probably_ nice enough to pass Talia’s inspection. He hoped. It didn’t much matter, anyway, because no way in hell could he afford another one, if she didn’t like it. Hell, he was just thinking about rent, and if he had enough to make gingerbread.

He was prompt enough on the doorstep, though, this time around, when the Camaro pulled sleekly over by the curb. He hadn’t quite overcome his crush on the car, still staring in delighted awe every time he saw it, but he knew better now not to gush about it, in the hopes of dragging a smile out of Derek. It wasn’t gonna happen.

The car was always warm, though, every morning. Stiles hadn’t garnered that much more conversation out of the other man in the last few mornings, but the guy was still turning up to drive him, so he figured he couldn’t be despised too much.

Derek, though usually quiet in the mornings, seemed even quieter when Stiles slid into the passenger seat this time around, uncharacteristically carrying a briefcase, (Scott’s) long black overcoat draped over his suit. He waited for the engine to rumble to life, but nothing came, and when he looked up, Derek seemed to be staring.

“Uh. Buddy? You all good? What, did I get toothpaste on me?” he asked, looking down immediately, self-conscious. Yeah, OK, so he’d made an effort to look the part. He’d found the briefcase his Dad gave him when he graduated college. He’d even styled his hair not to look so haphazard. But perhaps he’d overdone it.

Derek offered no criticism, nor any _help_ , though, simply clearing his throat and shaking his head, snapping his eyes away as he started the car up.

“No. Sorry,” he said brusquely. Stiles was tempted to press for more, but he knew when he was pressing someone’s buttons, most of the time, and he wasn’t gonna piss off the one guy who seemed pretty decent, actually, despite the weird rumours and the silences that stretched on and on and on.

“So, I’m starting the new job today,” he said after a moment. Sometimes when he did this, tried to have a conversation like a normal person, Derek just flat out ignored him. That was cool, he knew how to talk to walls. He’d done a lot of it when he was younger.

This time, though, Derek’s nose crinkled, and there was a distinct look of distaste painted across his features.

“I know,” he replied, ever short and just shy of monosyllabic. Stiles could have asked _how_ and _why_ , but he decided to leave it alone. Maybe Talia told him.

“Yeah, hence the suit. It was an _order_. Apparently you can’t just wear jeans and impress the rich folk,” he continued, hoping for a glimmer of a smile. A laugh. Anything.

Nothing.

He felt a brief little burst of frustration, but pushed it away, determined not to be deterred. Maybe he just sucked at making friends; that could have been it.

“Not gonna lie, I’m kinda nervous. But at least, you know, I’m not on my own. Your Uncle, bet he knows what he’s doing. I’m just there to look nice and human and pretty.”

Yeah, that got a reaction, that’s what he wanted.

“You’re there to work and avoid speaking with him as much as possible,” Derek corrected, his voice hard. Stiles had heard some pretty fucking hard tones before, being the son of a _cop_ , but Derek pulled it off in a startlingly firm manner. Stiles almost didn’t dare argue with him.

Almost.

“Think I’m gonna have to talk to the guy, we’re partners. He can’t be that bad. I’ve handled creepy guys before,” he said casually, brushing it aside. Maybe not a good idea to call any member of Derek’s family creepy, but hey, the guy warned Stiles off Peter Hale the second he heard about this arrangement.

He was met with silence, though, that silence even more pronounced when they pulled up in front of the office, the engine dying abruptly. Derek didn’t get out the second they stopped like usual, though, instead leaning over and around his seat to rummage for something in the back.

Up close, Stiles could see where his stubble began against his skin, and resisted the urge to smooth his fingers over it.

A large Ziploc bag filled with about twenty different types of herbs and quite a few crystals landed in his lap roughly, and Stiles looked up in surprise to see Derek watching him, not quite as gruff as he normally was.

“You asked for more supplies,” he said in way of explanation, and yeah, there was the gruffness. Return of the gruff. Derek was lucky it kind of suited him.

“Yeah, man, I asked for more wolfsbane, this is like, massive. I was gonna make you a list, you didn’t have to do _this,_ ” Stiles blurted out, more than a little in awe.

“Dude, this is amazing, this would have cost me a whole month’s pay, oh my god. Thank you,” he added, gushing only very slightly, he thought. A good effort, when what he really wanted to do was just fucking hug the guy and buy him dinner or _something_ to say thank you.

OK, so he couldn’t afford dinner. Or. Anything else. He doubted the offer of his young and supple body would go over too well.

“Don’t mention it,” Derek muttered, face turned just enough away so that Stiles couldn’t see his expression. He didn’t need to add the ‘No, really, _don’t_ ,’for Stiles to get the message. Even if he didn’t, Derek’s abrupt exit from the car was enough to really drill it in.

Weird guy, Derek Hale. Not much good with words, but he seemed to be some kind of – gentleman.

Stiles was aching to examine the contents of the bag more closely, but he resisted, knowing that him being late wouldn’t do him any favours, and he wanted to at least do this right, considering how wrong everything else he’d done was. Prove he was appreciative.

He shoved the bag into his briefcase along with the files and his lunch, and headed inside, glad that he’d stolen Scott’s coat. It was getting colder by the day, and the snow was sure to start in an hour or so. Maybe sooner. DC was unpredictable.

Whatever he’d been expecting when he walked through the doors, it hadn’t been the same silence that he’d received from Derek. The chatter died down almost immediately, and he could feel every set of eyes on him. Well. That was disconcerting. He paused, unsure, before ignoring it and heading to his desk.

“Jeez, Stilinski,” crowed a voice from across the room. He winced. “You look like a _grown up_.”

It could only belong to Erica, and lo and behold, when he looked up to address it, there she was, grinning at him over her desk. It wasn’t a particularly kind grin. Boyd was seated beside her, though he looked somewhat long-suffering.

He was about to open his mouth to retort, no doubt something sparklingly witty and cutting (or, more realistically, along the lines of ‘your _face_ looks like a grown up’), but he was cut off by a smooth, low baritone from over his shoulder.

“If I’ve been informed correctly, he _is_ a grown up. I made sure to check he was legal.”

Turning around quickly, making the bottom of his coat billow out, Stiles had to look up, just a little, to meet the owner of the voice.

Ah. The dick in the suit. Actually, looking pretty nice in his even _nicer_ suit today. It made Stiles pale in comparison.

If he’d been paying attention, instead of silently sizing up the man before him, he would have seen Erica shrink back, chastised. That would have been pretty damn satisfying.

“Stiles, I take it?” Peter said with a smirk, when it became apparent that Stiles wasn’t going to say anything. He took his time before answering, trying to prove his own worth here. If he was going to work with the guy, he wanted to be on _equal_ footing. And with a wolf, that meant not backing down, and holding his own.

“That’d be me,” he said finally, aware of his audience. “Peter, I take it?” he added, just brushing the line of mock and disrespect. Instead of the downturn of lips and hardening of eyes that he might have encountered with anyone else, Peter’s lips curved up into an amused smile, and his eyes twinkled.

“I see you’ve been forewarned,” he countered smoothly. He seemed much more – pleasant – than Stiles was expecting. Actually, he wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting, but it hadn’t been this. What with Derek’s warning and all, he’d been vaguely picturing someone just as gruff as he was, and maybe even worse than words than him.

Realistically, he knew that didn’t make sense. Peter was the go-to make nice talk guy, he had to have some social skills. Against his better judgement, Stiles found his own lips twitching up into a smirk, and he nodded, leaning back against his desk.

“By more than one person, yeah. You’re babysitting me,” he said, rolling his eyes in a fashion he _knew_ Talia wouldn’t have liked.

Unsurprisingly, Peter seemed to enjoy it.

“And here I was told I was getting a partner. You hardly look enough to need a babysitter.” 

He really shouldn’t have laughed, but yeah, he did. And he could still feel eyes on him from all over the room. He wondered for a second whether Derek’s were amongst them. He wanted to look around and check, but that would have given him away, and besides, he was sure that they were. They’d just be unhappy ones.

“Are we going or what, then? Not that I really know _where_ we’re going, but lead the way,” he said with a lazy flourish of his hand, pushing himself off the desk and standing upright. He was almost as tall as the guy standing. It occurred to him, seemingly out of nowhere, that he and Derek were almost exactly the same height, too. While Peter was undoubtedly handsome, if a little pretentious looking, he could barely see the family resemblance.

Peter’s shoes, what looked like real leather, rich asshole, clicked over the floor as he walked, and Stiles followed, feeling rather like a puppy, though he wouldn’t admit to it. He’d half been hoping for another gorgeous car like Derek’s, but the car Peter led them to was a government issue black Cadillac. He bit back the disappointment.

“I suppose my sister didn’t tell you much about the job,” Peter said once they were seated. At least it had a driver, Stiles conceded. That was kind of awesome. He felt almost as rich as the Hales. He eyed the man out of the corner of his eye, trying to work out how to respond. He didn’t want to take the bait and badmouth Talia, but he wasn’t about to play obedient dog and sing her praises either.

“She said you’d be able to tell me more,” he answered carefully, setting the case at his feet, and trying to keep an eye on where they were headed. Not easy, through the heavily tinted windows.

“Said I’d be convincing a bunch of senators to restore her budget since they don’t wanna deal with you,” he added. Blunt, maybe, but he was still working on levelling the playing field between them. He didn’t want to look intimidated.

“Hm, yes. That’s unfortunate,” Peter agreed, sliding a thumb over his phone, barely looking up at Stiles. It bristled. Shouldn’t have, but it did.

“They don’t trust anyone outside their own species. Barely trust anyone _within_ it, either, but there we are. That’s why you’re here,” he continued, taking a moment to look over at Stiles, a sly smile curling across his face. “That, and you’re easy on the eyes.”

If it threw him off, he didn’t show it, keeping his face perfectly neutral. His Dad would have been proud. All those years of teaching him how to sit through an interrogation had paid off.

“I doubt I’ll be getting many propositions,” he replied drily, resisting the urge to ask where the _fuck_ they were going. He disliked not knowing the finer details. The when and where and why and how. He usually squeezed it out of whoever was around him. He doubted Peter would be wrung dry that easily.

“Oh, I wouldn’t be so sure,” the other man replied quietly, smirking down at his phone. There was a certainty in his voice that Stiles was drawn to, to want to know why it was there, why he seemed so sure. He kept his mouth shut about it. Derek’s warning settled heavy in the back of his mind. While it seemed unnecessary and overly worrisome, he heeded it. Don’t talk about personal shit with this guy. Mental note #1.

“So, what are we doing today?” he asked, in an attempt to steer the conversation away from his own personal life, and hopefully to the work they were actually supposed to be doing. Peter seemed to take the hint, because he backed off, albeit with a smirk Stiles half wanted to smack off.

“I’m taking you to a meet an associate of mine. She’ll be a familiar face soon enough. I rather enjoy her company. I imagine you will, too,” he explained. There was that weird certainty again, laced with amusement that Stiles was almost sure was at _his_ expense.

So, OK, the guy was smooth. Didn’t mean Stiles had to like him.

Much.

“Who is she?” he pressed, wanting more information. Vague explanations were all well and good for any other agent, but Stiles didn’t settle for vague. He liked precise, clear and in full.

“A senior aide to the Senate Majority Whip. Ambitious young woman, make no mistake. Only a little older than yourself.”

Well, that sounded interesting, actually. As far as Stiles could tell, that sounded like a pretty high ranking position for someone his age. He was still trying to work his way up the ranks of an outlying organisation. This was the _Senate_.

“Huh, sounds impressive,” he conceded. “So what do we need her for?” He wasn’t naïve enough to believe this was going to be a social call. He figured the deal was, everyone they met, he had to bargain something out of them. He just needed to work out what he could give away, before he started.

“Contrary to popular belief, it’s not the Whip who does the work, has the connections, knows the backstory of every Congressman and can use it against them. It’s the senior aides, and she knows everything there is to know about everyone you’ll be meeting with,” Peter explained, almost lazily, like this was boring him.

Maybe it was boring him. Stiles was clearly the new kid on the block here, and maybe she’d assigned Stiles to him as some sort of punishment. Make him go over the finer details of his job. Stiles really didn’t care if it was causing his discomfort. He wanted to do a job, and do it well.

“Guess I’d better make a good impression,” he replied, mostly to himself. His first impressions left a lot to be desired in the past, which might have explained why Scott was his sole friend. He came off as rude and smug to some people, and he _knew_ that. It was just a matter of changing that. He was trying.

“You’ve impressed me,” the other man countered, his voice low and even the same way it had been back in the office. Stiles tried to grasp flattery, but it eluded him, and he was left – unsettled.

“I haven’t really _done_ anything yet,” he muttered. He was getting restless now, he wanted out of the car and into wherever they were headed, wanted to be able to talk to other people, not just confined to Peter Hale, who was seriously confusing him.

“You’ve pissed off my sister countless times, and yet here you remain. Assigned to me, no less.” The words seemed amused, and Stiles realised that he was being laughed at again. He made an effort not to bristle.

“Yeah, well, honest mistakes. Your sister obviously wasn’t pissed enough to get rid of me. So unless _you_ wanna fire me, I don’t think my little transgressions are your business,” he shot back, voice heated. OK, so he’d bristled.

It only managed to draw a laugh out of Peter, making him finally look up from his phone, regarding Stiles with something that looked a lot like the way you’d watch a particularly well trained dog.

“Simmer down, spitfire, I don’t even have the power to fire you. And I’d hardly want to, you’re the best entertainment I’ve had in years,” he stated with a grin. It bared his teeth, and made Stiles’ spine tingle with a shudder he forced down.

That brand of attractive shouldn’t be allowed.

Before he had the opportunity to form some kind of argument, the car rolled to a smooth stop, and he felt relief flood him. He opened the door, grabbed his case and stepped out almost immediately, not wasting any time in letting the icy air bite at his skin, a respite from the warmth settling in his cheeks and threatening to tinge them.

If Stiles had been expecting the Capitol building, he was sorely disappointed. They were parked outside a huge, nondescript sort of structure, windows spanning the edges. It was in no way dome-like, or grandeur. His face must have shown it, because Peter leaned over the top of the car toward him.

“Don’t worry, you’ll get there, we’re just starting small time.” Stiles couldn’t tell if he was trying to be reassuring, or if he was simply being an ass. Examining the man’s face, he decided on the former. He couldn’t detect any malice there. If it _was_ , it was buried deep.

“I’m not worried,” he brushed off, avoiding the sludge in the gutter and stepping onto the sidewalk, following when Peter made purposeful strides to enter the building. “Where’s this, then?”

“Senate offices, built in the seventies,” Peter answered, sounding bored again. “That, at least, explains the dreary surroundings,” he added, holding the door open for Stiles. He muttered a thank you.

“Don’t be put off by the building, half the senators in the country work from here,” the man continued, clearly knowing just where he was going, every movement smooth and fluid, as if he’d been here a thousand times. He probably had. Stiles had to walk twice as fast to keep up.

“Of course, most of them completely resent it and want to work up on the Hill with the big boys.” That was called over his shoulder, and though Stiles couldn’t see it, he was sure it was accompanied by a smirk. He couldn’t quite hold in the laugh.

“And just calling that out in the middle of the hornet’s nest isn’t going to get you stung?” he countered with a smirk of his own, swiftly turning a corner and mounting the steps. Quite a few receptionists had given them sideways glances.

“Oh, they already despise me, what more can I do? Might as well tell the truth.”

For a second, Stiles felt sorry for the guy. It must have been fucking awful to just to be _hated_ for what he was born as. He didn’t have a choice in the matter, and yet, here he was, his job limited because a group of humans couldn’t deal with it. Assholes.

“Yeah, I bet you’re great at making friends. Fun guy at parties,” he said, voice dry. Out of the car, and away from Peter’s gaze, he felt a little more at ease.

“People appreciate my charm, don’t you worry about that, spitfire.” Oh, good. The nickname was going to stick. His face screwed up in distaste, but he didn’t bother correcting it. Wasn’t going to do any good, anyway.

“Clearly those people don’t reside here, or you – “

“What are _you_ doing here?”

Stiles almost double-took to look over his shoulder, certain the words were meant for him. They belonged to a woman just emerging from her office, her eyes narrowed.

“I desired your company, what else?” Peter answered smoothly, lips curving into a smile. Oh. Not meant for him, then.

“Bullshit, you only come here when you want something, Hale,” she snapped, turning on her heel (shit, higher even than Erica’s, and clacking over the tiled floor) and stalking back into her office. She left the door open. Stiles took that as a gesture that they were meant to follow.  

The office wasn’t as big, or luxurious as Stiles would have imagined it to be, considering how astonishingly beautiful this woman was, but it was nothing to scoff at. Sat behind her desk, she looked almost as powerful as Stiles thought the President probably would.

“You’ve brought a friend,” she said after a moment, when they were both seated before her. He felt like he was sitting in the principal’s office waiting to be suspended. Peter looked in his element, though, his smile seemingly genuine and never fading.

“My partner. Brand new. Stiles Stilinski,” he introduced, though he didn’t even glance over to Stiles, his eyes on the woman. Stiles didn’t blame him. Her nose screwed up, though, and he could just tell what was coming next.

“That’s an absurd name,” she proclaimed, eyeing him carefully.

“It’s a nickname,” he explained, his voice not nearly as weary as it was when he had to explain this to everyone else. “My real name’s Polish, and impossible to spell or pronounce. Believe me, this is better for all involved.”

That, at least, seemed to have piqued her curiosity, and her eyes became less suspicious, clearly weighing up whether or not she liked him or not.

“I bet I could do it,” she said finally. He recognised the gleam in her eye, thirsting for the challenge. Much as he was enamoured enough to give it to her, he grinned, shaking his head.

“Nope. You’re not getting it out of me,” he replied, leaning forward. “Especially when I don’t even know _your_ name yet.”

He could practically feel Peter smirking beside him, but ignored it. He’d learned all manner of terrible pickup lines in college, and he knew when he was being charming, how to turn it on. It just depended on who’d respond to it.

“Lydia Martin,” she answered crisply, sitting back in her seat. She seemed unaffected. Damn. “PhD,” she added, the gleam returning. She was clearly proud of that, then. Stiles had to hand it to her, that was pretty fucking impressive.

“Oh, yeah? In what?” he asked, half genuinely curious, half playing to her ego. She seemed to puff up a little, the way he did when someone asked about his magic, and he knew he’d struck gold.

“Economics and Public Policy.” She met his eye, her mouth curling into a self-satisfied smile. “Yale.”

She must have been some kind of genius along with being maybe the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen in his life. He waited for the attraction to spark and crackle to life. It wasn’t happening.

“Lydia likes to brag,” Peter interjected, looking between the two of them as if they were an interesting show. Any pleasantness in her demeanour faded almost instantaneously, and she shot him an icy glare. 

“Ms. Martin to you,” she snapped. The frostiness didn’t seem put on, or like it would melt away any time soon. She must actually really hate him. “Now, tell me what you want so I can kick you out as soon as possible.”

It didn’t seem to put Peter off, though; on the contrary, he seemed to be enjoying himself even more. Maybe he liked irritating her.

“I’m teaching my new partner the ropes. My lovely sister’s decided that I needed someone to help things along, and he needs to meet the key players,” he explained, still smiling. He didn’t even seem to resent the notion that he needed _help_. Stiles was sure he did, it was just buried beneath the surface.

“And you want me to set up meetings.” It wasn’t a question. Her voice was flat and unimpressed.

“We both know you can work your way into any schedule there is, no matter how tightly packed.”

“Oh, stop trying to flatter me, it doesn’t work. I despise having to deal with you, and you know it.”

Stiles wondered whether she was one of the people who refused to deal with Peter because he was a wolf. It certainly sounded like there was a level of animosity there that could be borne from prejudice. Or maybe they had history.

Clearing his throat, he shifted in his seat until Lydia’s gaze fell on him again, hard and intimidating.

“I’d appreciate getting to know the senators I’ll be working with,” he offered, trying to keep his voice pleasant enough, even if he had his suspicions. He hoped to hell she wasn’t one of the ignorant dicks, but she may well have been.

She watched him quietly for a minute, sizing the request up. This time, he felt like prey. Peter’s eyes were on him, too, but he didn’t acknowledge those, instead holding Lydia’s gaze.

“You. Go wait outside,” she ordered, waving a hand in Peter’s direction. He hesitated, his mask flickering a little, and Stiles could see consternation beginning to form, but he did as told, laying a hand on Stiles’ shoulder. He did his best not to shrug it off.

“I think I’ll go for a coffee,” he said, lingering for just a second too long. Stiles could feel the heat of his hand through his jacket long after he left the room.

“You’re unlucky, landing a job with Peter Hale,” Lydia said bluntly when the door clicked firmly shut behind the older wolf. He shifted again, a little uncomfortable. Already, this was way harder than he thought. He was used to just speaking his mind, how was he supposed to respond to that? Did they _want_ him to denounce his partner?

“Why’s that?” he settled on after a short moment. Drawing out answers seemed wiser than providing his own. At least if she gave him something to work with, he could work out what she wanted to hear from him.

“He’s a liar, a cheat, a manipulative worm, and he’ll screw you over without thinking if it benefits him.”     

OK, that was blunt as hell. Stiles paused, wondering exactly how he was supposed to respond to that, before deciding honesty was probably going to get him the furthest here. Or, well, the most honest he was going to get without risking his head.

“Nothing to do with his – nature?” he asked, careful to veil his words. He didn’t know for sure that Lydia even knew about the real purpose of their division, and he didn’t want to blow the secret. Not the first day on this job.

She scoffed, though, waving her nails in the air as if he’d suggested something as ludicrous as say, the idea that she _didn’t_ attend an Ivy League school.

“What, the werewolf thing? No, I hardly care about that. I know lots of decent werewolves,” she replied airily, though Stiles thought there might have been an edge to her voice that betrayed offense taken.

“Well, good,” he countered firmly, leaning over the desk a little. “Not to be rude or anything, but I was pretty sure we couldn’t be friends if you were one of _those_ people.”

That made her lips twitch a little, and he felt a burst of satisfaction.

“What makes you think I want to be friends with you, _Stiles_?” she drawled, smirk widening. She was as human as he was, he could tell, but she was a whole different grade of human. She was _biting_ , and he knew that one wrong word would be enough for her to topple him down with.

“You let me talk,” he answered simply, voice a lot more even than he actually felt. He wasn’t doing too badly, he thought, but she still made him nervous, and he was hyperaware of fucking up, saying the wrong thing, or rambling, as he was prone to do. “And you sent Peter away, let me stay.”

“Yes, well, I abhor Peter, and I don’t hate you yet,” she brushed off. Yet. That wasn’t entirely a bad thing. He could work with yet.

“Well, I like you already. And, you know, despite being paired up with the guy, I want to do this job well. Seems to me like you can help me out there.” He was careful to inject just a little flattery into his tone, hoping it would work better for him than it had Peter.

Considering him in silence seemed to be her favourite thing right now, letting him stew in his juices and worry about whether he’d made misstep, but since he was pretty dependent on her answer, he bit back the urge to hurry her along, sitting in his own silence, waiting.

“I’m setting you up with an easy one first,” she declared, flipping open the planner in front of her (leather, red, real) and examining the pages. “No way you can handle Dewitt yet, and you don’t know enough about the numbers to be making any real talk with the high rankers.”

He made the wise decision _not_ to be offended by that. She was probably right, anyway. Instead, he perked up a little, squaring his shoulders and sitting up in his seat, interested. If she saw it, she didn’t acknowledge it. 

“Tomorrow morning, you’re having a breakfast with Senator John Thomson at Lincoln’s on tenth. Eight fifteen, he likes whole wheat waffles and eggs; scrambled, not boiled. Get it right, he’ll put it in a good word for you with someone more important, and we’ll work from there,” she explained, her voice back to crisp and professional, as if he were a client. He supposed he was kind of a client. He was doing business after all.

“Eight fifteen, whole wheat, scrambled. Got it,” he recited, nodding once. Inside, he was squirming happily, pleased with himself for managing to do what he assumed they’d come here to do. Outwardly, he tried to keep it cool. “Thank you, Ms. Martin.”

“ _You_ can call me Lydia,” she corrected. It might have been a kind offer from anyone else. From her, it just seemed like she was spouting a fact, cold and simple. He took it as a compliment anyway.

“Thank you, Lydia,” he amended, standing with a grin. “And thank you for the warning,” he added. It was a risk, that one, but he decided to take it anyway. Offer up a nugget of his own in exchange for the cooperation. No need to give _more_ than that, though. He knew how this worked, or he thought he was beginning to learn, and he didn’t have that much currency of his own. Yet. “It’s not the first one I’ve heard.”

He turned to leave, satisfied with what he’d given, and certainly what he’d garnered, only glancing back to catch the intrigued look he’d managed to elicit.

Peter was waiting outside for him, looking entirely unaffected by the cold, but then, most wolves were, a cigarette in one hand and a coffee in the other. Stiles thought that he might have left, petulant at being kicked out, but no, there he was, looking up and offering Stiles a small smile.

“Isn’t she delightful?” he said in way of greeting, holding out the smoke for Stiles. Wrinkling his nose up, Stiles shook his head, shoving one hand into his pocket, the other clasped around his briefcase, cold. He’d have to buy himself some nice gloves. If he could afford it. The only ones he had now were woollen and Batman themed. Not exactly professional.

“She hates you,” Stiles stated plainly. There was no point in veiling himself with Peter, not when the man was so honest himself. Not about work, anyway. He was still wary to discuss anything personal.

“Oh, she loathes me,” Peter replied cheerfully, blowing a perfectly formed circle of smoke. Stiles watched his mouth curve around it, and admitted to himself privately, that was cool. “But she’s always fun to visit. How did it go?”

Stiles shrugged, trying to remain nonchalant. He’d thought it went pretty awesomely, and he was pretty proud of himself, but he kept it cool. No need to show that he was pleased with himself. Peter might have taken it as some kind of personal accomplishment of his own. No. This was all his.

“OK, I think,” he replied. “She doesn’t seem to hate me. I have a meeting tomorrow. Eight fifteen.”

Peter’s brows rose almost up into his hair, and he took a moment to appraise Stiles, clearly impressed. Stiles did his best not to puff up under the attention.

“She gave you a meeting? You’ve done well, I thought it would take at least three separate attempts until she finally gave in. Who with?” he asked, voice mostly awe-laden. There was an edge of something else in there, but Stiles couldn’t _quite_ identify it. Smugness? Self-satisfaction?

“Thomson,” Stiles supplied, his breath coming out in a white puff against the air. “Don’t know who he is, but he likes waffles, apparently.” He’d have to do some research when he got back to the office.

“He’s small time,” Peter countered, though he didn’t seem at all put out. “He doesn’t do much, works behind the scenes on drafts, small staff. But he’s a foot in the door. Well done, spitfire.”

Allowing himself one small grin in Peter’s direction, Stiles indulged the little blossom of pride in his chest, just for now. He hadn’t screwed up first day on the job, that was something.

“So, we going back or what?” he asked, turning to the car. It was cold, and he was going to get frostbite on his fingers soon.

“Yes, I think we’re done for today,” Peter concurred, flicking the cigarette butt to the ground and smudging it out of his existence with the toe of his shoe. “Nice thing about this job, plenty of free time in between waiting for people to see you,” he added. Stiles was tempted to ask exactly what the man did with his free time, but he figured that would only open the door for Peter to ask about his, and he was still unsure about that. Better to wait and see exactly how creepy the guy was.

“As long as I’m getting paid, I don’t care what I’m doing.” Mostly true. He might bitch and complain about menial tasks, but if it meant the bills got paid, he really didn’t care, not enough to say no.

“Oh? Interesting,” Peter commented, sliding into the back of the car beside him and quirking a brow. Stiles glanced at him out of the corner of his eye, suspicious. Derek’s warning, combined with Lydia’s, was enough to weigh at him. He stayed silent, pulling out his phone to flick aimlessly through it, mostly so it looked like he was _doing_ something.

“I suppose we’ll just have to wait for tomorrow morning, then,” Peter sighed, mirroring his actions. “I’d accompany you, but I’m afraid I won’t do much good. He doesn’t like me much, either.”

Stiles couldn’t hold back the scoff then, looking up incredulously.

“Does _anyone_ in this town like you?” he asked.

“Not many.” He didn’t sound as bothered by that as Stiles thought he ought to be. He didn’t even like being disliked in the office, much as he tried to conceal that. It wasn’t gonna do him any good to let anyone see that it kind of stung being excluded. He’d learned that way back in high school.

“But I don’t need to be _liked_ ,” Peter added. Stiles was ready to argue that, actually, because he kind of did need to be liked to get people to do shit for him, or Stiles wouldn’t even be here right now. He kept the argument to himself, though. “I’m fairly sure you like me, anyway.” The comment came with a pleased sort of smile.

“Yeah, what gives you that idea?” Stiles scoffed. Rude, maybe, but he felt like he could get away with rude with this guy. It wasn’t as if he was being rude to _Talia_.

“I’ve made you laugh several times, and you don’t seem as if you’re going to go to my sister and beg for a new assignment,” Peter explained. “And for now, at least, you seem clever enough to me. You’re being wasted cooped up in that office.”

Huh. Well. That was – kind of nice, to be acknowledged that he had something more to offer than being chained to a desk. He felt his cheeks heat up just the slightest bit, not enough to actually manifest, thank god, and shifted in his seat, uncomfortable the way anyone got when they were complimented.

“Well, I don’t abhor you yet,” he summoned up finally, stealing Lydia’s words. That was about the kindest, warmest remark Peter was going to get out of him, at least for now, and the older man seemed to understand that, smirking and returning his attention to his phone, speaking only once more their entire trip back to the office.

“And I’m rather fascinated by you.”

* * *

Stiles had managed to corner Scott in the last few days, seeing as he’d actually stayed _home_ for once. He hadn’t weaselled out where he’d been going to yet, but he had talked the guy into going for the drink with Isaac.

It hadn’t taken much convincing, actually. Scott almost jumped at the opportunity to say _yes_ to something, rather than the long string of ‘Sorry, I’ve got a thing’ or ‘I’ll be out tonight, don’t wait up.’ Stiles suspected it probably had something to do with the fact that Scott was interested in the stray pup thing, too. That had to help.

Actually, even though he still thought Isaac was a bit of a weird guy, especially with the knowledge that he and Derek were friends, and Stiles hadn’t noticed that at all, he had to admit, he was looking forward to going out with the guy. He needed a night to relax after how nervous he’d been the last few days.

Not being fired was a nice relief, but with not being fired came a whole slew of new worries. And though Scott might tell him _not_ to worry, he did anyway. It was his nature, he worried, he over-analysed, he did stupid things to try to help the people around him. He didn’t want to screw up this job, he wanted to be useful to Talia. And – and this was a new worry completely – he didn’t want Derek to think he was an asshole.

He’d only spoken to Isaac a little more in the past week to set it up, and he hadn’t even been in the office yesterday. He was tempted to ask Derek where he was, on the off chance he might know, but the man looked surlier than usual when he’d returned from his expedition with Peter. Stiles figured he might have gotten his head bitten off if he’d said so much as a word.

Interesting side note. Werewolves didn’t like those eating humans jokes as much as Stiles did.

For a good fifteen minutes, sitting in the bar with Scott and waiting, Stiles thought they might have been _stood up_. Isaac was late, and he hadn’t got a text or anything to warn them. He was just beginning to get a little irritated (he’d been stood up plenty in his life, he’d had enough of it) when he caught a glimpse of the other man darting through the crowd, looking as if he’d been trying to find them for a while.

“See, I told you he was coming,” Scott muttered, grinning over at the guy. Stiles decided not to dignify that with a response, since he could tell that Scott was getting fidgety about it too.

“Hi, sorry I’m late. I got – held up,” Isaac apologised, ducking his head and taking a seat across from the both of them. The stool made him look even taller, towering over them. Stiles was about to bite out something undoubtedly nasty, because hey, sometimes he was a dick, especially when he came really close to being irrationally hurt, but his eyes caught a shadow of something on Isaac’s face.

“Dude,” he said slowly, ducking his own head to try to examine Isaac’s. “What the hell happened to you?”

Scott was looking just as concerned, and while he wasn’t as obvious as Stiles was about it, he was peering curiously. Isaac lifted his head reluctantly, and Scott sucked in a breath beside him. Half the man’s face was covered in a dark bruise, yellowing around the edges. Worse, though, was what looked like a slash down his cheek, pale pink where Stiles could see it attempting to heal.

“This guy jumped me on my way. Think he wanted to mug me. I got away,” Isaac answered, but the words were almost immediate, and there was a certain steady rhythm that suggested, at least to Stiles, that it was rehearsed.

“That looks really bad, man, you want me to do something about it?” Scott asked. He was almost reaching out already, ready to leech away as much pain as he could before he got light-headed. Stiles almost had to hold him back like a dog. Almost.

“No, that’s OK, don’t worry about it. Barely hurts. Anyway, that’s why I was late. Sorry,” he repeated, shaking his head. Scott visibly slumped in disappointment, and eyed the bruise for another moment, but recovered himself in the next.

“OK, well, lucky you’re way stronger than him,” he countered, voice light again. Any muggers trying to rip off a werewolf were just asking to be mauled, in Stiles’ opinion. Even though he knew the law. If a wolf ever hurt a human, life imprisonment. Or quiet execution. Usually the latter.

“You sure you’re OK?” Stiles asked, still focused on Isaac’s cheek. It looked like hell. And what’s more, it didn’t look ten minutes old, either. He knew a fair bit about how wounds looked on a healing werewolf; he’d seen plenty of Scott’s, and his own magical curiosity had led to him examining Scott pretty thoroughly, trying to devise his own treatments. Isaac’s cut looked older. Way older.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Isaac reiterated. “Seriously, it was a shock more than anything else. Now, I want a drink. What are you guys having?” he said firmly, pulling out his wallet. Stiles’ gut told him that was a lie, and to keep arguing, but he ignored it. If the guy didn’t want to discuss it, he didn’t have to. Not right now, anyway.  

“Beer.”

“Wine. Red, please.”

While Isaac moved to fill their order, Stiles turned to Scott incredulously.

“Dude. Since when do you drink _wine_?” he asked.

“For a while. What? I like it. I had some at a party, it was good,” Scott answered. He was trying to be nonchalant about it, but Stiles could see the defensive bristle starting up. More weird behaviour from Scott. But it wasn’t huge, so he let it go.

“Hey,” he said instead, lowering his voice. “Did you hear his heart skip?” Stiles didn’t have the lie detector, but he could always rely on Scott’s.

“Yeah,” Scott admitted, his own voice mirroring Stiles’. He looked a little uneasy about admitting it. Stiles was pretty sure it was rude to listen to another wolf’s heartbeat, but this seemed important. “I don’t know how he ended up looking like _that_ , but it wasn’t a mugger.”

Yeah, Stiles suspected as much. His mind flickered back to the bruises the kid used to wear, and how they’d suddenly disappeared. He’d figured whoever had been hurting him had been dealt with. Maybe not. He didn’t have a chance to say any more, though, because Isaac returned, handing him a tall, frothing glass.

“Thanks, man,” he said, taking a gulp, enjoying the fact that it would take Scott and Isaac ten times more than him to even get tipsy as much as he was enjoying the bitter taste on his tongue.   

They sat in silence for a moment, a long, -drawn out moment, before Scott cleared his throat and volunteered his own social skills, which Stiles and Isaac seemed to lack.  

“So, come on, Stiles, tell us about your first day,” he said, nudging Stiles unnecessarily hard. Swallowing, he rolled his eyes, though yeah, alright, he had been kind of looking forward to bragging.

“Well, I mean, we didn’t exactly do much,” he started off. An attempt at modesty. “Peter just took me to see this woman, and oh my _god_ , you two would have died,” he added, a smug grin working its way across his face.

“Yeah?” Isaac asked, smirking. He was cradling his own beer, though he hadn’t sipped it yet.

“Uh-huh. Kinda scary though, you know, like a dominatrix. But _way_ hotter.” He could have gone on to describe strawberry blonde hair and legs for days and the curve of her lips, but that would have made him look like a girl. An obsessive girl. He refrained.

“Scary’s your speciality,” Scott interjected, rolling his eyes. “You’re not even remotely interested in anyone who couldn’t kick your ass.”

True.

“Not true! I just _happen_ to have dated a few intimidating types,” he protested loudly, to which he received only snickers, from Scott _and_ Isaac. Scowling, he took another long gulp of beer.

“OK, fine, whatever, I like scary people, fuck you guys,” he muttered into his glass. He decided he liked snickers better than gales of laughter.

“So? What did your dream woman want? And are you gonna ask her out?” Scott prompted, his eyes still glittering with amusement.

“Oh, right, she sets up meetings and stuff with all the senators. Important people, I guess. I’ve got one tomorrow. But apparently she’s hard to impress, and, uh, I guess I’m just that good,” he explained with a smug grin.

“You mean she wanted you out of her office as soon as possible,” Scott snorted, rolling his eyes.

“You gonna ask her out?” Isaac repeated, looking a little more curious than he had been about anything else. Or maybe he was just enjoying the conversation. Stiles couldn’t quite tear his attention away from the bruise, but he thought maybe the guy had relaxed a little.

“Nah,” he answered after a moment, surprising the others and himself with the answer.

“What, why not? She sounds like your idea of a wet dream,” Scott argued, his voice raising enough that they got a few glances. Stiles stared back until they looked away again. He’d picked up a few things living with dogs.

“Because, I don’t know, I wasn’t _attracted._ She’s fucking hot, but I didn’t necessarily wanna screw her,” he brushed off, trying his hardest not to seem bothered. He was, actually. He didn’t know why he wasn’t attracted to her, she _was_ his idea of a wet dream.

“You’re already into someone?” Isaac piped up. It almost didn’t sound like a question. It only raised very slightly at the end, and for a second, Stiles thought it was seriously just a statement of fact. Which would have been wrong.

“No, that’s not even it. I don’t know. Weird anomaly, leave it alone. She would have said no, anyway.” That was probably true. He’d had quite enough of embarrassing himself in front of beautiful women.

“You don’t know that,” Scott argued quietly, but there was no real heat behind the words. He knew when he’d lost a battle, and Stiles wasn’t interested in pursuing this one.

“Sure do, buddy. But, I got a meeting out of it, which is cool. Kinda seems like this is gonna be less boring than I thought. And I might even be _good_ at it,” he countered, draining the glass and allowing himself to look a little pleased.

“Of course you’ll be good at it,” Scott scoffed, as if the notion of Stiles _not_ being good at his job was ludicrous.

“Talia gave you the job for a reason,” Isaac added, his voice softening. Stiles recognised the tone, actually. It was the same tone he used when he wasn’t sure he should even be speaking. It seemed strange to hear it from the other man, but then, he hadn’t expected to be out for a _drink_ with him at the start of the week, either.

“Well, it’s not _field_ work,” he said finally, falling back onto the safety net of wanting to be Scott, essentially. He liked that net. It meant he didn’t have to think about the fact that he might actually not have the skills to do the job he so badly wanted. And that he might be really good at something _else_.

“You kinda fucked up field work, though, man,” Scott pointed out. Great guy, Scott, but he didn’t sugar-coat, and he always told Stiles the truth, regardless of whether he wanted to hear it or not. Which Stiles needed, he had to admit. Scott kept him in check.

“I was _helping_ ,” he maintained, before he saw the look on Isaac’s face. Even he looked disapproving. “But yeah, I fucked up,” he admitted quietly.

“Well, you’ve got a new job, now, and it’s way more prestigious than either of ours,” Isaac said, his voice actually managing to be reassuring. “You get to work with Peter Hale.”

“Oh, yeah, what’s he like? Everyone says he’s really weird,” Scott added, leaning over.

“Uh, yeah, he’s weird, for sure. Kind of creepy – I don’t know, I feel bad talking shit about him, he wasn’t _awful_ to me or anything. I just kinda got a weird vibe,” Stiles answered, uneasy. He could have mentioned the two separate warnings he’d received. He should have, really, but they stayed buried and silent inside him.

“If he’s freaking you out, you have to tell me,” Isaac said suddenly, straightening up. His voice was firm, his eyes hard. He looked like _Talia_ did when she was ordering him around. Surprised, he felt himself actually tilt back.

Isaac seemed to see the shock, though, and tried to dial it back.

“Just – you know, if he’s creepy. Tell me, I’ll talk to Talia,” he mumbled, shoulders hunched over again. Stiles could feel his own confusion mounting, and he was fairly sure that Scott was pretty confused, too. That had come out of freaking nowhere. The other guy seemed withdrawn, and you know, weirdly shy, but coming out with an order like that seemed out of character.

“Uh. OK, yeah, man,” Stiles agreed after a moment, though his voice was slow and unsure. “But hey, it could just be me. I’m sure it’s all fine.”

It didn’t seem to reassure Isaac, who stayed hunched over and quiet, but Scott seemed placated, leaning back in his chair and ordering another round, flashing a smile at the waitress passing by to do so. Stiles would never have been able to pull that off; he’d have to go to the bar himself just to get served.

“Well, good luck with it,” he said, smothering a yawn. 

“It’s only, like, eight, are you kidding me?” Stiles teased, nudging Scott’s shoulder with his own.

“Leave me alone, I was up early, I had work to do,” Scott defended, though he did manage to suppress another yawn. “You’re gonna have work to do, too, by the sounds of it, and you’ll have to be up as early as me, too.”

Stiles pulled a displeased kind of face at that, one that his father would have reprimanded, but he didn’t deny it. No more sleeping in til seven thirty for him. He was kind of OK with it, actually. If he was going to be helping out, really helping them out. Better than the fuck up in the field, anyway.

He didn’t quite realise how much time had passed by the time he looked at his phone again. The bar was half empty now, the noise dimming down and the mood considerably lower. They’d been here a few hours at least, all of them downing their fair share of alcohol (Stiles cut himself off after a while – he didn’t want to be hung-over for this meeting), and Stiles had decided that for all his quirks, Isaac was kind of cool. He felt even worse for being a dick to him before.

The only indication that they were going to wrap up was Scott’s phone chiming, and his face lighting up when he read the text.

“Uh, you guys mind if I take off? I’ve got to go see a friend,” he asked sheepishly, running a hand through his hair. Stiles desperately wanted to ask who, but the smile on Scott’s face was enough for him to hold back.

“Yeah, dude, all good. I should be going home to bed anyway,” he answered easily, shrugging. Isaac looked a little more disappointed, but nodded anyway.

“That’s fine, go see your friend.” It was nice, at least, to know that he’d been enjoying himself. Made Stiles feel a bit better about himself. Shooting them a happy grin, Scott jumped up, saying his goodbyes and almost sprinting out.

“Huh. Wonder who that was,” Stiles mused, stretching his arms out above him and standing. Following suit, Isaac shot him a puzzled look.

“You don’t know? I thought you guys were, like, best friends.” He sounded confused. He _looked_ confused. In fact, Stiles was kinda beginning to think confused was a good adjective for this guy.

“Yeah, but it doesn’t mean I know all his other friends,” Stiles countered, though he didn’t look incredibly pleased about that fact. He couldn’t help the shiver as they hit the cold night air, and he loitered on the sidewalk, summoning up probably the last trickle of his magic left to warm himself up.

“I guess,” Isaac mumbled, pulling out his phone and thumbing out a text. “Uh, you want a ride? I’m just gonna wait for mine,” he offered.

“Nah, man, I can walk, it’s fine. S’not far. I’ll wait with you, though.”

It would be the perfect opportunity to ask about that fucking bruise that had been playing on his mind since the beginning of the evening. Leaning against the brick wall of the bar, they waited, ignoring the passers-by who shot them sideways glances.

“Listen,” Stiles started, voice low. “I don’t know how you got the bruise, Isaac, but it wasn’t a mugger.”

Isaac’s eyes widened, and he almost _visibly_ recoiled, shaking his head.

“No, it’s OK,” Stiles reassured.  “You don’t have to tell me who it was. Just, you know, if it happens again, or if you need somewhere to stay. Scott and I have a couch you can use,” he offered, making sure he kept his body language neutral. He’d learned enough from his father (and yeah, psych 101), to know not to tower over or use dominating posture with someone who was already scared.

Isaac blinked, the shock clear on his face, before he ducked his head, and Stiles thought he could _maybe_ see a red tinge to his cheeks. It could have been the glow of the streetlights, though.

“It’s fine,” he said finally. “Really. I have a place – but thank you.”

Stiles didn’t need the superpowers to know that Isaac’s heart wouldn’t have skipped. That was sincere.

“Well, offer’s always there if you need it. And I can also offer my services to kick whosever ass it is,” he added, purposefully letting his tone darken. He was pretty sure they were friends now, but even if they weren’t, he wouldn’t stand by and let someone beat the shit out of someone he knew. By-product of being a cop’s kid.

Isaac might have said something more, but a car pulled up to the curb in front of him, and Stiles looked up, surprised.

The Camaro.

He didn’t marvel at it this time, actually, he was too surprised. Derek was in the driver’s seat, peering out curiously at Isaac.

“Derek!” Stiles said, startled. “Oh. Hi.”

“Stiles,” Derek greeted, voice short. As usual.

“Um, thanks for the drink,” Isaac said, seemingly awkward again. “I had a really good time. And – thanks for everything else.”

“Oh, yeah, yeah, no worries,” Stiles replied, visibly distracted. He’d known that Isaac and Derek were friends, but they must have been really good friends to give each other rides like that. He wasn’t sure why it was so _perplexing_ to him.

“I’ll see you at work then?” Isaac asked carefully, gazing at him as if he were about to topple over or something. He probably looked ridiculous, all shocked and distracted.

“Uh-huh, yeah, work. We’ll go out again sometime,” Stiles promised, his eyes still flitting behind Isaac to Derek, who didn’t look nearly as pissed as Stiles thought he would be, having to come out at night and almost _socialise_.

Isaac brightened at that, and he looked as if he was probably holding himself back from _somethin_ gas he slid into the passenger seat beside Derek. Stiles caught the easy movement of it, how fluidly he moved, as if he’d done it a hundred times over. He probably had.

It was only as Derek’s eyes fell on the bruise the same way that Stiles’ had that he even remembered.

“Oh! Hang on a second,” he said quickly, loudly, almost bouncing in his revelation. Derek looked somewhat startled, but did as he was told, the engine idling as Stiles dug through his bag, past the scrunched up papers and chocolate wrappers until his fingers closed on what he was searching for.

Pulling the small bottle out, he handed it out to Derek, waiting.

“What the hell’s that? Are you trying to sell me drugs?” the man asked incredulously, raising a brow. Isaac couldn’t muffle the snort of laughter from beside him, and Stiles’ mouth twisted into a scowl.

“No. Idiot. If I wanted to sell drugs, sure as hell wouldn’t give them to you, you’d barely get high on your metabolism,” he shot back, rattling the bottle of pills.

“Take them, will you? They’re for your Mom, I told her I’d make her Valium that wouldn’t make her queasy.”

Derek still didn’t move, simply staring at Stiles in silence. Thinking that maybe the guy just had to _buffer_ or something, Stiles waited.

Nothing.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, Isaac, tell your weirdo friend I’m not giving him drugs, they’re for Talia,” he snapped, exasperated.

“Uh, Der? They’re probably just Valium,” Isaac said quietly. His voice was laced with that same kind of respect that Stiles heard in all the wolves, the one reserved for an Alpha, or someone superior to them.

Isaac’s words seemed to have served as a defib or something, because Derek jerked back into reality, hand reaching out to take the bottle from Stiles, his fingers brushing over the other man’s as he closed his hand around it.

“Thank you,” he said, voice low.  

“Yeah. No problem. I’m going home now. See you tomorrow, guys,” Stiles replied, stepping back from the car and attributing the warmth in his fingers to the fact that werewolves fucking leaked heat. And his magic was warming him up. That, too.

“Night,” Isaac called out, but Derek seemed to have a habit of pulling away fast, and Stiles watched the tail lights speed down the road, turning the corner and disappearing from sight.

He might not have been a werewolf, but anyone looking to rip _him_ off was asking to be mauled, too.

He made it home perfectly safe.


	6. Chapter 6

“Are you trying to sell me drugs? Seriously?”

“Shut up, alright, he handed me a bottle of pills, what the fuck was I supposed to think?”

“Oh, I don’t know, you could have just asked him, instead of accusing him of dealing?”

Derek didn’t bother to answer that one, partly because he knew it would only get him another mouthful of incredulity, but also because he was a little embarrassed. Maybe more than a little. It had been a stupid thing to say, yeah, but he’d been caught off guard. He was even more caught off guard when Stiles actually told him what it _was_.

Isaac had been giving him hell about it for a few nights now, but Derek suspected that was because he’d had such a good time, and he didn’t want Derek to embarrass him. (He’d be wrong, Isaac was just baffled that Derek’s social skills were so poor.)

“Fine, whatever, but it was weird,” he conceded, sitting himself down in a chair next to Derek at the table. Once more, it wasn’t laden with food, but maps and candles, spread across the entirety of it. Certain areas of the map were inflamed, burning red, though the paper remained untarnished, as did the table.

Isaac reached out to stick his hand in the middle of one of the miniature infernos, grinning at the novelty of being able to rest it in fire and not be burned. The whole thing made Derek a little uncomfortable, the way the flick of a lighter did, but he endured it.

“ _This_ is weird,” he pointed out, hoping to change the subject. It had been a few nights since the last time he’d monitored the magical activity of the surroundings, and since then, three or four new fires had cropped up. That was out of the ordinary, and unhealthy, and definitely not sanctioned.

“So, what’s going on?” Isaac asked, peering over the maps and chewing on the end of a pencil.

“There’s more magic being practised than we allow for. It looks like the same thing McCall and Stiles went to face, except there’s more of it,” Derek explained, not looking up from a fire burning not too far from his mother’s place. He didn’t like that. Not a bit.

“So, what, there’s more witches not obeying the rules?” Isaac sounded somewhat unsure, but mostly carefree, at least compared to Derek. He tended to worry more about the immediate threats, like the rogue wolves they took into captivity to train and release into registered packs, rather than little things like build-up of magic.   

“Mm,” Derek hummed in agreement, not bothering too much to lift his head and answer that properly. “I think they’re probably headed up by the ones who got away from McCall,” he added, though that was more to himself than to Isaac.

“Scott. You gotta start calling him Scott, we’re friends now.” If he didn’t sound so pleased about that, Derek would have told him to cut the shit and get over being smug.

He ignored it, instead, and focused on the fire burning near Talia’s apartment. Isaac followed the movement of his eyes, and how quickly his face morphed from morbid curiosity to concern.

“What’s up?” he asked cautiously. Derek was never very receptive when he got into one of his moods, the kind where he shut himself up in his room and refused to talk (sometimes they lasted for whole days, and Isaac pretended he didn’t hear the other man crying).

“Nothing,” Derek muttered, though his gaze didn’t move from its one spot on the map.

Isaac stayed silent, but he let the silence speak for itself. He called bullshit, silently, and he wasn’t going to speak again until Derek amended it.

“There’s a lot of activity there. S’where Mom lives,” Derek added finally, his voice slightly muffled, like he was trying to shove down the concern back into his throat where it belonged.

Oh. Now Isaac understood. He’d never met Derek’s family in any official capacity, the way he ought to have, though he’d known Talia from work, but he _did_ know that whenever it came to Derek and his family, he didn’t take anything lightly. Derek had told him everything that had happened, and as a result, he knew how protective the man was over what family he had left.

“You wanna tell someone?” he asked, clearing his throat. He didn’t know that they could really do anything, since he doubted Talia would assign herself protection, not even if they had a full budget, but he thought maybe the office ought to at least know.

“No.”

That was a definite answer, and Derek wasn’t budging. If there was a threat, he’d deal with it, and he’d avoid getting anyone else hurt in the process. Of course, he didn’t exactly know how he was going to neutralise a threat without stepping foot in the field, but – he’d do it. Somehow.

Sighing, Isaac gave up, tossing the half chewed pencil down onto the map, and dousing a candle with his thumb and forefinger, extinguishing every blaze over the map. Derek looked up in surprise, not at all impressed.

“You’ve looked at this thing enough for tonight,” Isaac offered in way of explanation. “If there’s a threat, you’re not going to work anymore of it out staring at a piece of paper. Tell Scott or someone. Stiles, even.”

He wasn’t going to be telling Scott. Stiles, though. Stiles had done pretty well taking on the other witches. He had to put it down to the human, rather than Scott, because magic was defeated best with other, stronger magic.

He could ask Stiles for help. The kid seems to have had no problem helping him out in the past, doing all sorts of ridiculous little things he didn’t need to. The thank you. The pills. He might actually work with Derek and –

No. What the fuck is he thinking? He doesn’t ask for help. He’d never asked for help in his life, not since he was a tiny little thing. Not since her, not since he’d learned that asking for help was a sign of weakness.

And asking for help only got people hurt. He wouldn’t do it. Stiles was a pain in the ass who didn’t follow orders, and he talked too much, and he _confused_ Derek, but he didn’t deserve to be hurt.

He’d figure this out on his own.

“Fine,” he grumbled, dousing the remaining burning candles and gathering them together, folding the maps and leaving them in a neat pile in the middle of the table, the broad expanse of wood returned to its normal tidiness. “No more tonight.”

Isaac looked fairly self-satisfied, and Derek let it slide. The kid needed something to be happy about. His face was just starting to heal up nicely, the whole of the bruise yellowing now, a sick pale colour that no one liked, and no one could like, but it meant it was getting better.

“Sit down, relax,” the younger wolf ordered, shoving Derek gently toward the couch. He was getting more and more pushy with Derek, but he saw that as a good sign. He was only ever pushy when he was trying to get Derek to sit with him, or make some attempt to talk to someone at work. At least it meant he was getting better at giving orders, not obeying them.

Sitting down rather more roughly than he needed to, Derek ran a hand through his hair and watched as Isaac sat beside him, his wolf instinctively matching their heartbeats. That happened when you lived with another wolf for long enough. If he had a pack, not just splinters of family, all their heartbeats would have synced up.

“You gonna tell me about how your night went, then?” Derek asked after a few minutes, intrigued. Isaac had refused to speak about it the night he’d come home, going straight to bed, and then in the morning, hadn’t offered up his own information. If he wasn’t so _happy_ , if he didn’t feel happy, then Derek would have assumed something had gone awfully wrong.

He was met with a shrug. He waited. He was sure the kid would cough it up sooner or later. Maybe he was just getting shy.

“It was pretty great,” he conceded, a whole six minutes later – Derek counted, because it was the moment the ads finished on the television. “They were nice. We had a good time.”

“Stiles wasn’t an asshole to you?” Derek asked warily. The man had said that he’d apologise for that little comment he made, and he seemed pleasant enough to Derek every morning, but he was still cautious of him being a dick and screwing Isaac up even more.

“No, he was actually kind of nice. Really nice,” Isaac answered quietly. He looked a little surprised himself, as if he hadn’t expected Stiles to be nice to him at all. Maybe he hadn’t. Derek was slowly trying to build up the kid’s self-esteem, but it was slow going.

“Did they … ask about your face?” Derek asked after a long moment. Maybe not the kindest of questions, since he knew Isaac didn’t want to talk about what had happened _at all_ , and he refused to let Derek go over there and at the very least cuss out his father, but he felt like he needed to ask anyway.

Isaac stayed quiet for a beat, and Derek could see the conflict flit across his face, deciding whether or not to release some little bit of information.

“I told them it was a mugger.” Even his voice betrayed how bad of a lie that was, and they both know it. Derek decided not to point that out. That would be cruel. “But, uh, they didn’t believe me. Stiles kind of - he said I could stay with them. If I needed to get out.”

If Isaac heard the jump between his heartbeats, he didn’t acknowledge it, his mouth curling up into a small smile. The idea, however ridiculous, because he knew (hoped) Isaac wouldn’t leave him, was enough to make him nervous.

“He’s not as much of an asshole as I thought,” he muttered begrudgingly. That had been a pretty fantastic thing to do, actually, and it served as more than an apology, which was more than Derek had asked for.

Confusing. He didn’t understand why this kid that most everyone around him hated, was doing so much for people he barely even knew.

“He’s not even close to being as much of an asshole as you thought he was. Your judgement was all clouded because he ignored Talia.”

True. A little. But it had been warranted. He hated anyone who didn’t follow the rules. The rules were there for a damn reason, so that no one got hurt, so that things went smoothly, so that there were no surprises. Surprises were the worst thing you could have in the middle of an operation.

That wasn’t to say he’d completely forgotten that Stiles’ little surprise had saved Scott’s life. He just chose to barely acknowledge it.

“You gonna go out with them again?”

Derek could practically feel the hesitation shrouded around Isaac, but it dissipated quick enough, quicker than usual. He could already tell these boys (men, just because they’re younger, doesn’t mean they’re not men) were going to be good for Isaac. He approved. 

“I think so. Yeah. I hope so. They seemed to enjoy it, so. Yeah, I think we will.”

He stayed quiet from then on, happy enough with Isaac’s answers. It was a strange relationship they had, the two of them, really. Isaac was definitely his responsibility, and in some ways, he felt like he was a much better father figure than his _real_ father. But he was also in no way his father figure at all. He was his friend, mostly, or at least, that’s how he liked to see it.

Brother, maybe. But he’d lost a lot of brothers, and if he named one more, it might mean he’d just lose another all over again.

“He said his job was going pretty well. And – uh, that Peter was a bit off putting,” Isaac volunteered eventually. His voice had become unsure, as if he was just as uncomfortable with this topic as Derek was. He knew what Peter had done. Derek had told him everything.

Derek’s back straightened, and every muscle tensed up. He hadn’t forgotten, but it wasn’t pleasant to be reminded that his mother was blatantly ignoring the fact that she could be getting a kid hurt, either.

“What did he say?” His voice was sharp and authoritative, an Alpha tone, without him meaning to use it. He barely used it. He didn’t like giving orders so much, he didn’t like the amount of power that lived inside him. He just wanted to be left alone quietly with his family. The only thing to come out of this power given to him was Isaac, really.

“Just that he thought Peter was kind of weird, but it wasn’t that bad. I told him to tell me if anything happens,” Isaac answered quickly, obeying the command in Derek’s voice. “I think I probably looked intense and kind of strange, but – maybe he’ll tell me.”

Derek hadn’t asked Isaac to keep an eye on Stiles for him. He wouldn’t do that. Isaac just wanted to be friends with the guy, he didn’t want to have to be his babysitter. But he’d done it anyway. Seen how shook up Derek got when he explained it. Taken it upon himself to help.

Sometimes Derek thought the only good decision he’d ever made was turning this kid.

“Thanks,” he mumbled, nudging Isaac’s shoulder with his own. “You don’t have to do that, but – yeah, thanks.”

He shouldn’t have been so worried about Stiles, his concern should lay solely with the notion that Peter might try something. It should be Peter he was fixating on. But his mind wandered to Stiles nonetheless, and he imagined the kid getting hurt, could almost see him sliced in half like –

But those were images for his nightmares, not for waking hours, when he could sit here with another wolf and have it feel like almost guiltless family.

“I should do something about this magic thing,” he added. “It looks serious. I’ve got this feeling, I don’t know. Seems coordinated or something. We could be in trouble if we don’t just nip it in the bud now.”

“Well, what _can_ you do about it?” Isaac asked, brow furrowing. He still mostly worked tech support, since field agents were pretty good with guns, but useless with computers. While he might have picked up a fair bit just from being in the office, he didn’t know a lot of the procedures they had in place, or the solutions to problems.

“Guess we can just do the usual. Find the covens, arrest the practitioners.” It seemed like the wrong answer though, even as Derek said it. That’s what they’d normally do. Scott had been sent out on one of those missions exactly; though they’d expected it to be smaller. They could easily overpower weaker covens.

But this seemed different. Not only because the witches who’d escaped arrest were presumably stronger than expected, but because of how fast the power surges had gathered.

“Don’t you have to tell Talia to do that?” Isaac pointed out.

“Well. Yeah. And she’ll send out as few people as she can.” Not out of any intent to get someone hurt, or to actively be negligent, but she had to handle the money, and she wouldn’t justify sending out an entire team to dispel a series of covens.

“You could try it, you know,” Isaac suggested slowly. This was unsteady ground, and he knew it. Derek didn’t do field work, ever, and he’d never organised anyone to do field work, either. That was Talia’s job, and even though he technically had the clearance to do so, it would be seen as undermining. Snakey.

“I’m not arresting anyone,” he snapped quickly. “I don’t do that shit.”

Isaac shrunk back just for a second, before he recovered himself.

“Yeah, I know, but you could at least work out a plan, and send a few agents in. Even just Scott, you know, and maybe Boyd and Erica. They’re all really solid, they know how to handle this stuff.”

“I don’t want them to – “ Get hurt. He didn’t want them to get hurt. Not because of his orders.

“What, hurt themselves? Be in danger? Come on, Derek, this is their job, they know what they’re getting themselves into,” Isaac shot back, rolling his eyes. He was getting better at calling Derek out on his shit. He guessed it came with familiarity.  His wolf had no problem formulating counter arguments, though it would never disobey a direct order.

“I’ve never sent anyone out before,” Derek argued, though he could feel the protests growing weaker. “Mom would be pissed as hell.”

“So? You’ve made your Mom pissed before, she’ll forgive you. Maybe she’ll even be impressed you took some initiative. That you’re doing something other than lab work.”

That was a bit of a stretch; she’d definitely be pissed he did anything without her say-so.

“We don’t know anything about these surges. I could be sending them out into a situation unprepared, and they could get themselves killed.” I could get them killed, is what he meant. More blood on his hands.

“We know that one of them’s close to your Mom’s house. You wanna sit around and do nothing about that? Seriously?”

Yeah, winning blow, and Isaac knew it. That was the end of Derek’s protest. If his family was in danger, he’d do something. Isaac understood that, and exploited it.

“I’m gonna work out a plan first, before I do anything,” he warned the younger man, half scowling. His heart rate had increased a little at the thought of it, but he wasn’t quite sure if it was fear, or anticipation.

“That’d be the smart thing to do,” Isaac replied, as if this had been his plan the whole time. “It’ll be fine. They’ll be glad to actually have an assignment, they’ve been stuck in that office heaps lately. You wouldn’t believe how much Erica bitches about it.”

Derek had heard it, actually, he heard everything that went on in the office, though he tried to block it out. The agents had been restricted to a lot of admin lately.  The cabin fever was getting bad.

“I’ll give Mom the money if she’s that upset about it,” he grumbled. He had more than enough of his own personal money to invest into the task force. That was just a little illegal, however. They depended on government money, not private donors. Impartiality, and all that.

“Speaking of money,” Isaac interjected, his voice growing smaller. “I think I’m gonna look for another job. Night shift, or something.”

Derek’s brow rose, and he turned a little to face the other wolf. He was already working two fucking jobs.

“Why? You’ve got two. That’s gonna exhaust you.”

“Yeah, well, I need another one. I can handle it, don’t worry. I don’t need that much sleep.”

Bullshit. He needed as much sleep as anyone, Derek already saw bags under his eyes, and that was just from working two jobs.

“Do you need money for something? Because you know I can give you whatever you need,” he offered, the concern bleeding through his voice. This was an argument they’d had over and over again, and it never got him anywhere.

“ _No_.”

The tone was as firm as usual, one of the only matters on which Isaac never budged.

“I have money, more than I need. I’m not going to let you work yourself into the ground. Look, what is it?”

“I’m not working hard enough, I need another job. If I earn more, I can buy a car, and then I won’t be late to Dad’s.” His face was beginning to crease into an expression of distress, and Derek had to work hard to keep his temper under control.

“What, did he tell you that?” he pushed, voice low and rough. “You’re not working hard enough? He doesn’t fucking see you come home at two in the fucking morning, Isaac, you work plenty hard. If you want a car, _I’ll_ get you one.”

They’d learned that Derek driving Isaac was a bad idea, the one and only time they’d tried it. He’d showed up outside of the house, let Isaac out, and hadn’t even so much as _looked_ at his father after Isaac had begged him not to. He’d come home with a nasty bruise at his temple, and he refused, point blank, for Derek to ever come anywhere near the house again.

“You’re not buying me a fucking car, I can do it,” Isaac snapped. Derek was pushing now, he knew it, and if he pushed hard enough, he might be able to get Isaac to smack him. He thought it might do the kid good, but he’d never had the balls to really make it happen.

“You’re not getting another fucking job, do you hear me?” he snarled in reply, his eyes flickering red. He could see the straightening of Isaac’s spine, the instinctive urge to obey, but apparently, Isaac was trying to ignore it. Not an easy thing to do, ignore an order from an Alpha, especially so new.

“I am. End of. I’m going to bed,” he spat back, standing abruptly and stalking into his room, slamming the door shut with a strength that made the frame shake. Sighing heavily, Derek ran a hand through his hair, wondering whether or not this was how his mother felt when he was a teenager.

Of course, when he was a teenager, he was learning how to pleasure a woman, and make her come over and over. When he was a teenager, he didn’t throw fits of rage because he was too busy sneaking out of the house to meet her. He didn’t fight with his Mom in case she saw the bruises and welts and burns on him.

He thought Talia probably didn’t feel like this, then.

Which only meant he didn’t know how to deal with this even more so. Isaac could probably hear his heartbeat racing, but then, he could hear the kid’s, and he was dual parts furious and frustrated, judging by the spasms in between beats.

He couldn’t ask his Mom how to handle this, not only because she might not know (she probably would, she had plenty of Betas, she knew how to keep them in line), but because Isaac was _his_ , and he was meant to be looking after him, not seeking out help. He was supposed to be able to handle it.

Fuck. He had no idea how to do this. Isaac had been a good kid, good wolf, for so long. Derek had barely had to fight him on anything. And like fuck Derek was going to let him drive himself into the ground all to please that bastard.

It occurred to him when he heard the thump against the wall that he might have said that aloud.

******************************************

Stiles didn’t understand whole wheat anything. He didn’t know why you’d pick it over, you know, the normal option, but then, he could probably stand to be a lot healthier. Give him the choice, though, and he would not be sitting here in front of whole wheat waffles.

He was sitting here in front of whole wheat waffles, though, across from a man who looked entirely too healthy. Not the kind of natural healthy you get from daily exercise and eating vegetables. No, this dude looked like he _bought_ his whole body out of a magazine and pasted his head on. It was weird, and disorienting.

The guy was nice enough, though.

“You’re a young one, kid. Didn’t know they sent college kids out on internships like this,” he was saying, while Stiles chewed. Had he been with Scott, he would have just talked through the food, but no, he had to impress cyborg here. He swallowed before speaking.

“I’m not in college, sir. Graduated two years back,” he corrected, sipping his orange juice. Thomson had ordered some kind of energy smoothie. Stiles wasn’t quite that dedicated to impressing the guy.

“Please, call me John,” he waved off, smiling. “Sir makes me feel like I’m old enough to be your father.”

He was kind of old enough to be Stiles’ father, just. He was thirty eight, a low-level Democrat, two kids, and he owned his house. He had concerns about the environment and the disregard the government had for it, and he liked Stiles, so far.

At least, that’s the extent of what Stiles knew about him.

“Thanks. But yeah, I get that a lot. I guess I’ve kind of got that face, huh? Though it would make it really easy to sneak back in to go to a few parties without anyone noticing,” he countered with a grin. Had this been some kind of strait-laced, scarier looking official, he would have been as professional as possible. But Thomson was kind of a good guy, he thought. Guy who could take a joke.

“Don’t get caught, they kick you off campus with an official warning and a reminder you don’t pay tuition anymore, so it’s trespassing,” Thomson said, grimacing. Stiles laughed, surprised.

“Speaking from experience, huh?”

“Oh, yeah. Though, to be fair, we were defacing college property.”  

That earned him a seriously unattractive snort of laughter, and Stiles had to hide the fact that he choked on a mouthful of waffle.

“So, what can I do for you, son? Lydia said it was imperative I meet with you, and to be honest, I just don’t like arguing with that lady,” Thomson added. Stiles privately agreed.

“Well, I’m working with a particular taskforce within the FBI. Talia Hale heads it up,” Stiles started, pausing to allow for any flicker of recognition.

“Triskelion, yeah. Gotta say, we’ve got some weird codenames, but that one takes the pie. That’d mean your partner’s Peter Hale.”  The name was said with a twist of his mouth, the same twist he’d seen on Lydia’s face.

“Yeah, Peter and I are working together. He thought it best if I meet you alone this morning,” he answered, careful to keep his words mild.

Apparently, Peter was a lot of people’s triggers. Derek, Lydia, Isaac. And now this guy. He had to wonder what was so bad about him. Yeah, he was a bit – _off_. But he didn’t seem be as bad as everyone made him out to be.

“And he was damn right. Son of a bitch knows I won’t meet with his sorry ass,” Thomson countered, his face turning stormy. “Pardon my language, son.” He actually looked remorseful about that, and Stiles felt himself warming to the guy.

He couldn’t say there were a lot of men he knew who looked sorry about cussing.

“Not a problem. I know he can push a few buttons,” he waved off, though he was itching to ask exactly what it was that so many people hated about Peter. Though Thomson might have given him a straight answer, he doubted it would have been a very good strategy to get what he wanted. “To be honest, I’m more interested in talking about what we’re trying to accomplish.”

Vague. Ambiguous. He was getting used to having to veil his words. If Talia could have just given him a fucking list of all the people who knew about werewolves and the rest of their supernatural shit, it would have been a lot easier. But no, she decided to just let him work it out himself.

“Absolutely, you’re right. I don’t know a whole lot about what you boys are doing over there, and I think there’s probably a good reason for it.” There wasn’t even a hint of bitterness in his voice.

“But from what I hear, someone’s gone and cut your money and Mrs. Hale is not a happy woman,” he added, taking another swig of his smoothie.

“She’s really not. But understandably. This is her department, and we’re not some bureaucratic money-wasting body, we value what we’re given, it’s not all pissed down the drain.” He could have mentioned a few committees who could have done with stripping of their budget, but that was stupid, even he recognised that. Better to keep it all in his head.

“I gotta tell you son, I believe you, I’ve seen the spending reports to come out of your sector. But there’s not a whole lot I can do for you. I don’t oversee HHS, and I don’t have a presence in Congress. Got a few friends in high places, is about all I can say,” Thomson explained, matter of fact. Stiles thought he would have been pissed about that, but he seemed perfectly content.

Maybe there was something in his smoothie. Or maybe Stiles was just too ambitious for his own good.

“And I’d really appreciate an opportunity to speak to a few of those friends, sir,” he countered smoothly. This was what Lydia had been talking about: use this guy to leapfrog to the bigger fish.

Thomson fell quiet for a moment, watching him, and briefly, Stiles thought he might have fucked up. Jumped in too fast, too soon, and ruined any chance of subtlety, at getting something out of him.  He waited with his breath held, though he didn’t back down. He wasn’t going to lose ground he’d just staked.

“You know what, I think I can arrange something,” he said finally, mouth curving into a grin. “Can’t stand Hale, but I like you. Never had the pleasure of meeting Mrs. Hale, but I doubt she’s as bad as her brother. Can’t choose our family, son, remember that.”

Stiles bit his tongue and worked hard not to roll his eyes. He was getting what he wanted, and from someone _nice_ , too. So what if he was a bit folksy?

“That’d be great, sir. I really appreciate that, thank you,” he said, mirroring the grin. He didn’t have to fake the sincerity.

Thomson pulled out his phone and scrolled down the screen, searching for what Stiles could only assume was a contact. He slid a pen out of his jacket pocket and scratched a number down onto a napkin, handing it to Stiles.

“Call this number, tell the secretary John Thomson’s calling in a personal favour, and schedule the meeting whenever there’s an opening. Don’t argue about the times, there’s no use doing that, it’ll get you nowhere. Take what she gives you,” he instructed.

Nodding, Stiles tucked the napkin into his pocket, trying to work out exactly how big he’d scored. If it was just another guy like Thomson, it wouldn’t be a _hardship_ to meet him, but it probably wouldn’t get him anywhere either. Fortunately, the other man seemed to realise what he was thinking, and leaned back in his seat.

“Ramirez,” he offered, his face lighting up when Stiles rose a brow, recognition flickering over his features. “You know him?”

“I’ve heard of him, yeah,” Stiles said casually. He didn’t want to let on that he knew the name from a file that marked him as someone Stiles had to manipulate. “He’s a Senator.”

“Sure is, and he’s a great one at that. I’ve known Matt for years, he’s a good guy. Tough guy, but a good guy.  He’ll help you out.” Thomson sounded pretty sure of himself, and Stiles could hear the fondness in his voice. Old friends. That could probably work in his favour.

“Look forward to meeting him, then. Listen, I should probably head off, sir, but it’s been nice meeting you,” he said, pulling out his wallet and laying down the crisp twenty Peter had given him. Stiles had wanted to refuse on principle, but he had no other way of paying for breakfast.

“You too, son, hope it all goes your way. And don’t get too involved with Hale. I’d get rid of him as soon as I could, if I were you. You can do his job with your hands tied and still be better,” Thomson replied, standing and brushing off his suit. The pride was a little marred by the confusion of not knowing who to trust, but he let it rise up anyway.

That was four warnings against Peter Hale now.

And he still had to work with the guy.

          

 


	7. Chapter 7

Isaac still wasn’t speaking to him. It had been a week now, and all the kid would do was sit at the kitchen table, where he could clearly see him, and flick through the job pages in the paper. Derek might have teased him about being a dinosaur before his time, not doing it online, if the silence between them wasn’t so tense. He’d tried to mend things the morning after their spat, but Isaac was out the door without so much as a glance his way, making it very clear that he had no interest in talking. For once, all Derek wanted to do was talk.

He was used to the kid chattering on at him more and more these days, and though he usually preferred it, the silence was unsettling him. Yes, they’d fought before, of course, Isaac could seriously get on his nerves, and he knew his trying to act like a parent sometimes made the other man want to kill him, but it was usually made up within a day or two.

He wasn’t going to change his stance, though. Not for a second. He’d rather buy Isaac a fleet of cars than let him get _another_ fucking job and work himself to death. Even with the werewolf strength, he barely had time to eat, and had even less energy because of it. He just hadn’t quite worked out how he was going to stop it. Isaac seemed fairly insistent.

The not talking was beginning to get to him. It wasn’t like he _needed_ to talk to people to get through the day; he usually went out of his way just to avoid talking to people. But Isaac wasn’t people. Isaac was his, and he’d begun to rely on coming home and being able to sit and talk with him, to tell him the list of irritating things people had done during the day, without even realizing it.

Laura was always telling him he needed friends, and he didn’t entirely realize just how much until now. Still, there was no point _whining_ about it, and he kept it to himself mostly. Instead, he worried. About everything he could find _to_ worry about. It took his mind off the idea that he was doing wrong by the kid, that he wasn’t being the Alpha he knew he should be. The Alpha his mother expected him to be, _his_ Alpha (even if he wasn’t totally sure that biologically, he still owed her his allegiance).

He worried about Isaac working too late, he worried about the smatters of magical activity that were still concentrated near his mother’s house. He worried about his mother stressing too much, about how lonely she was, and he worried about Laura being too invested in her work to have any kind of relationship. But most of all, strangely, he was worrying about Stiles, and worrying about what Isaac had told him about him and Peter.

Much as he didn’t like to admit it, he still hated Talia a little for letting Peter get away with what he was, and for endangering some _kid_ , sending him out there with him. He knew Peter, and he knew how Peter worked; he was slow, and sweet, and he worked his tendrils into people, waiting until they trusted him to strike. Derek had trusted him as much as he’d trusted the rest of his family, but after Laura –

He’d lost enough to make the mistake of trusting him again. Not ever.

When he wasn’t worrying, he threw himself into work, methodical and thorough as he always was, double and triple checking so that no clue might be left unexamined. He justified it to himself, and on occasion to Laura; he might not go out and shoot at people anymore, save lives with violence, but if he did this job right, if he pulled together all the physical evidence, then he could save even more, by prevention.

Not that any amount of lives he saved were going to make up for the ones he’d taken.

He was still driving Stiles to and from work. He seemed to be in the office every day that week, and though Derek hadn’t asked, he was told why anyway.

“I gotta wait, like, three weeks to even get in to see this guy,” he’d explained through a mouthful of cinnamon scroll. Derek could smell it on his lips for hours afterwards, all the way from across the office. “Dude’s popular, I guess. Or they don’t wanna deal with me.”

At least it seemed to mean that his interactions with Peter were minimal. The older man only came into the office sparingly, the drudgery of it clearly boring him, leaving Stiles to sit at his desk and tap away at his computer for hours, making notes on a pad next to the keyboard. Derek didn’t know what it was he doing, but he always seemed to have papers sticking out of his bag when he swung it into the car of a morning, so he must have been doing something productive.

The morning of the next Friday, it was freezing again, Derek’s overheated temperature not even enough to keep him totally warm, and Isaac still wasn’t speaking to him. Instead, he was staying out somewhere even later, getting into the loft at 3 in the morning, waking up at 6 to rush to work, and ignoring Derek all the while. He’d also returned home from weekly dinners with a nasty cut on the side of his face, one that bled when he didn’t realize, and Derek ached to wipe it and suture it up for him from across the kitchen table.

He didn’t.

Stiles piled into the car as always, a hurried, hectic mess, his hair always sticking out in wild places now that it was getting longer. Derek had thought the kid was letting it grow out from the buzz cut to keep his head warm. He huddled up to the heater, moaning gratefully under his breath as Derek pulled from the curb. Usually, the chatter was at least inane, and work-related. This morning, though, Stiles’ eyes were bright when he turned them on him.

“So, do you live with Isaac?” he asked, right off the bat, just barely finished having got the cheery ‘morning’ out of his mouth. Derek glanced over at him in surprise, before refocusing his attention to the road.

“Why?” he asked, guarded. They didn’t necessarily want anyone knowing. And he had a suspicion that Stiles would be a fucking blabbermouth.

“I just figured you might,” Stiles answered casually, shrugging a shoulder, but the way his heart skittered over the beats, Derek could tell it wasn’t casual at all. “You took him home that one time, and we’ve been out since then; he talks about not wanting to wake you up.”

Derek’s surprise showed even more clearly on his face this time, and he took his attention off the road for more than a few seconds.

“You’ve gone out together?” he asked, though he wasn’t sure why he was so surprised. Isaac stayed out late, and not all of that could be work. Derek had kind of thought it was, though. It was Stiles’ turn to be surprised, though, and Derek could see his brows raising out of the corner of his eye.

“You didn’t know? Oh, well, yeah, we’ve had a drink or two. He just seems kinda – dead on his feet lately?” Stiles continued, looking a little more hesitant this time around. “You got any idea why?”

Derek paused, considering. He wasn’t exactly willing to divulge any information about his personal life, but this was about Isaac. About Isaac’s well-being, and he wasn’t doing so well with that particular topic, so – trying something else might be a good idea.

“He lives with me, yeah,” he answered slowly. “I think he’s got a new job. I don’t know. He’s not talking to me.” That was hard to choke out past the sudden lump in his throat, he found.

“What, did you have a fight or something?”

“Yeah. I think the job’s exhausting him.”

“Well, yeah, working two jobs must suck, man, I’m tired all the time and I only work one freaking job.” Derek worked hard not to point out that Stiles didn’t even technically work a 9-5, tiring job. He worked selected hours and took three hour long lunches.

“Three,” Derek corrected. “This’ll be the third job he’s working.”

Stiles’ eyes nearly popped out of his head, and Derek felt somewhat gratified that he wasn’t the only one who thought it was ridiculous.

“ _What_? Three jobs? Are you for real, that’s like something out of a freaking horror movie! Along with, you know, Return of the Taxman, and Please Hold, Your Call is Important to Us: The Reckoning,” Stiles burst out, and Derek couldn’t _quite_ manage to bite back the small smile it elicited. “Why the hell is he working three different jobs?”

Another pause. This was trickier territory. He didn’t want to tell Stiles anything Isaac didn’t want him knowing, but – if the kid was talking to Stiles, he might at least be able to talk some sense into him.

“He thinks he has to. He wants a car. I’ve offered to buy him one, but – “ But he got shot down every single time, and when Derek had left his own car keys on Isaac’s bedside table, they’d appeared an hour later back in the bowl they usually sat in.

“Jeez. No offence to the guy, but I wouldn’t turn down you buying me a car,” Stiles replied. Actually, Stiles kind of understood the whole pride thing Isaac must have going on: he wouldn’t necessarily want to accept help from a trust fund baby, either, even if Derek did seem kind of nice after a while. Once you got used to the almost perpetual silence and grumpy snaps.

“Well, he has, and now he’s got some new job, and I don’t know what the fuck he’s doing to himself, because he won’t _tell_ me. He won’t even look at me,” Derek snapped, regretting the words the moment he’d said them.

“Are you two, like … a thing?” Stiles asked after a moment, his voice uncharacteristically soft. Derek almost teased him for the high school terminology, but he snorted instead, shaking his head.

“No. I just – look after him,” he answered, refusing to offer up any further information. Stiles already had more than enough. And Isaac was making it really fucking hard to look after him right now.

“Huh. Well, I can talk to him, see what kinda job it is,” Stiles offered, nonchalant, and it really was nonchalant that time, like it meant nothing to him. Derek was beginning to realize that these small little acts of kindness really did mean nothing to him. He just handed them out like he had hundreds on hand already. It baffled Derek.

“Are you friends now?” he asked, voice just a bit too sharp.

“Yeah,” Stiles answered, glossing over his prickly temperament. “I mean, I think so. He’s cool, when he talks. Guess he was just kinda shy at first.” Derek bit back the urge to tell him he had no idea of how shy Isaac could be.

“Can you – make sure he’s OK?” Derek asked hesitantly. This was a lot like asking for help. Help with something that was _his_ responsibility, something he should be able to look after himself. He felt weak, not being able to do it on his own.

“Yeah, sure,” Stiles replied, almost immediately, not even needing to think about it. “Do you, uh, do you know who hurts him?”

The question had Derek slamming on the brakes, shocked, just in time to screech into his parking spot. He looked over at Stiles with slightly wider than usual eyes, unsure how to proceed. This was stuff Isaac _definitely_ didn’t want Stiles knowing.

“You know about that?” he asked finally, voice low and slightly hoarse. Yeah, Isaac had told him about what Stiles had said the other night, but – the fact that he was mentioning it, that was a little more significant.

Stiles looked slightly unsure now, but he stood his ground.

“I pieced it together,” he answered, looking vaguely uncomfortable. “My Dad’s a cop, so, you know. I saw a lot of that when I was a kid. I know the signs. So. Do you know? Because I’d really like to go find whoever it is and kick his ass.”

Derek bit out a harsh laugh at that, mirthless. His fingers were tight around the steering wheel, anger bubbling up.

“So would I, trust me,” he muttered. “I – can’t tell you,” he added, voice softening. “Would if I could, but I promised I’d never tell anyone. Or I would have told the fucking cops,” he spat. He wouldn’t have called the cops, and he knew that full well. He would have gone around there and torn into the man’s throat if he could do what he really wanted to.

Stiles looked disappointed, but he nodded anyway, breathing out in a huff.

“Yeah, OK,” he sighed. “I get it. I’ll keep an eye on him. Report back. Anyway, I gotta get in there, so I’ll see you tonight. Thanks,” he added, before hoisting his bag up and clambering out of the car, leaving Derek sitting alone, vaguely flustered, his cheeks pink. And not from the cold.

* * *

“I hear the Hales aren’t doing so well,” Victoria remarked, offhand, while she took apart a gun on the table before her. “Talia Hale’s furious about her budget.”

Allison looked up from her own work; the beginnings of an essay which would go toward her final score, and determine whether or not they’d accept her as a Masters student.

“Well, you’d be mad if you got all your money taken off you, too,” she replied, bracing herself for what was coming.

“The whole operation’s a disgrace,” Victoria countered, voice hard. “They should be locked up at the very least, not working on government money.”

Allison bit the inside of her cheek in an attempt not to argue, but it was getting harder each time her parents started all this up with her. They were still expecting her to go into the family business when she finished school. That was half the reason she was dragging it out so long.

“They could be helping people,” she said finally, looking down at her book and trying not to make it seem like it was a big deal that she was arguing.

“They’re animals, Allison, they don’t want to _help_ anyone. They kill, that’s what they’re made for. And we’re made to stop them, you know that.” Allison knew the spiel so well by now she could recite it word for word in sync with her mother. She never dared to actually do it, though.

“I heard they took out a whole coven a few weeks ago. Imagine the kind of damage they prevented,” she argued, her voice letting just a little pride seep into it. Scott had told her all about the coven, and how exciting it had been.

“Eliminating competitors,” her mother said, levelling a steady gaze at her, one Allison could feel boring into the top of her head before she lifted it. “They’re not _good_ , Allison. Don’t go making the mistake of believing their act. Do we need to remind you about your aunt?”

Allison swallowed, shaking her head. Kate was the reason her mom and dad worked so hard all the time, she knew. Why they detested the Hales, all of them. Peter Hale might have been the one to kill her aunt, but they’d all been implicit. She hated them for it too, sometimes, but she didn’t buy into the all wolves are evil mindset her whole family advocated.

Scott wasn’t evil. Scott was fundamentally good, Scott loved her, and she adored him.

And if anyone found out, her family would kill Scott and disown her.

“Good,” Victoria settled on, still eyeing Allison carefully. “I don’t know whether going on to get your PhD is really a good idea. Maybe you should be starting training with us this semester,” she added.

“ _No_ ,” Allison answered, swift and firm. “I’m an adult, Mom, and I want to get a doctorate. I already told you, I’ll start training when I’m done,” she snapped. She was a grown adult, and she was still frightened of being cut off by her family.

“That could be another two years, Allison, we need you soon. There are ranks to be filled, the Hales are gaining more and more influence, we need to – “

“Jesus, shut _up_. I’m going home,” Allison snapped, gathering up her book and bag roughly and stalking out, slamming the door behind her, hard, before her mother could argue.

She could hear the counter anyway, her mother’s voice ringing in her ears, even if she’d said nothing. ‘ _The home we pay for, Allison, you need to start paying your dues.’_

Before she lashed out and hit something, Allison pulled her phone out and texted Scott, her fingers jabbing the screen hard.

_[Allison Argent: 3.12pm] About to kill my parents. Gonna hit the gym. You free?_

She was halfway to her car when the phone chimed, and she drank up Scott’s words eagerly, reliant on the calm he always managed to bring her.

 _[Scott McCall: 3.14pm]_ _I can’t bail you out if you kill anyone. Kill a punching bag instead. Will be in half an hour. See you there?_

Ordinarily, Allison would say no, they couldn’t risk being seen together at the same gym, but she was steaming, frustrated with her own lack of control over her life, and thumbed out the reply within seconds.

_[Allison Argent: 3.14pm] Uh-huh. Thanks. xx_

* * *

Research was time consuming, but that was OK, because Stiles had buckets of time. Great swathes of it. He’d called Ramirez’s office, and done exactly what he was told; taken the time they’d given him. That just so happened to mean a three week gap in between then and the meeting. Stiles wasn’t totally sure whether that was normal, or if it really did just mean that they hated him and wanted to make him wait.

Still, it gave him a whole great big stretch of time to occupy. For a while, he was tempted to just stay home and play CoD for weeks until the meeting, but he soon trashed that idea, adult enough to know that he should at least be trying to do some other work.

So he researched. And researched. And researched. As much as he could, in preparation. He still didn’t know a huge amount about the guy, so for the past two weeks or so he’d been Googling everything he possible could about Matthew Ramirez, watching every miniscule fox news story about the guy, and asking around the few contacts he had now – courtesy of Lydia, who had messengered over a small leather notepad with names and phone numbers.

He’d been pretty damn smug about that at the time, until Peter pointed out that Lydia hadn’t sent _her_ number with it.

All in all, though, he felt pretty good about the upcoming meeting. So, OK, he wasn’t totally making progress like he thought he might. Now that he’d actually committed himself to this properly, to wanting to do this job right, he’d imagined charming senators left and right, talking them easily into giving Talia back her money, having the office happy with him for once. Proving his worth. He wanted nothing more than to prove to them all that he really did belong there. He was good enough to be there, just like Scott, just like everyone else.

This was slow going, though. Really slow. But maybe, eventually, he’d get results. That was what he clung to, that hope. And, well, yeah, the fact that he had no choice but to stick it out.

He could distract himself from the looming threat of failure with going out, though, and he did. Actively. Scott was getting even busier with other things, other people, as Christmas approached, and while it stung a little more each time, Stiles told himself to stop being clingy, like he really used to be, and instead filled the void with Isaac.

Isaac. Now there was a surprise. For so long, Stiles had found him awkward and uncomfortable and a little too weird to really chill with, but the guy had seemed perfectly amenable to another drink, so they’d gone out, Stiles had talked him into drinking rum spiked nog, in the spirit of ‘not being a Scrooge’, and turned out, Isaac was pretty cool. When he wasn’t acting like a skittish deer.

The whole living with Derek thing was kind of strange, and Stiles still half suspected that they might be at least fucking, but he didn’t question it too much. Even if the thought was _kind_ of a turn on, he figured it was just because he hadn’t got any in a pitifully long time. And Derek seemed to care about the guy. In his weird, gruff kind of way.

Stiles had lost count of how many words Derek had said to him now, and he figured that was a pretty good thing. He didn’t like being able to _count_ the number of words on one hand. Derek might not say a whole lot, and it might not all be totally pleasant, but at least Stiles got some little sense of satisfaction out of it. Derek didn’t talk to anyone else in the office, ever.

Which was why it was so fucking bizarre when Derek actually got up from his desk, leaving Deaton behind, and approached Stiles’, in the middle of the day, when there were at least six other agents to see. Stiles looked up when he felt the presence above him, and his eyes about popped out of his head when he realised the broad figure was _Derek_.

“Hey!” he said, surprised, before lowering his voice. He was too loud to be around werewolves a lot of the time, and he knew it. He was _trying_ to be better. “What’s up?”

Derek looked extremely uncomfortable, and for a second, Stiles thought he might just turn back around, sit at his desk again and keep his head down like always, like nothing happened. But then he spoke.

“You practise magic.” The words were blunt, and Stiles waited for him to follow it up with something. Nothing came.

“Uh, yeah, sure do. Gotta say, though, Hale, if you want a love spell, I’m gonna charge you for it,” he replied, mouth curling into a cheeky grin.

Derek didn’t look amused.

“Do you practise in covens?” he questioned, voice hard and even like he was interrogating a suspect. Not that Derek had ever done interrogations, not that Stiles had seen. He’d probably be pretty effective; he was big and intimidating and just his _glare_ could elicit confession, but he didn’t seem to do anything but lab work.

“Not usually,” Stiles shrugged. He could tell people were listening in. “I mean, I guess sometimes, if I need a little power boost for a spell, but witches are so fucking up themselves, I prefer to work solo. Why, you looking for a crash course?”

Still no smile. He wondered if Derek had ever smiled, more than just a small half-curve up of his mouth.

“No. I need some – I need someone who can get into a coven without looking suspicious.” Derek sure as hell looked suspicious right now, his face twisting into some kind of slightly pained scowl.

“Oh, yeah? Well, I go sometimes, I could do it. Is it a _mission_? Is it some kind of secret mission?” he asked eagerly, leaning in, eyes bright.

“It’s nothing,” Derek said shortly. “It’s just something I want to check. Off the books.”

If possible, Stiles’ eyes got brighter, the way they did when he was truly excited about something, or if he’d been drinking. Off the books was even more exciting than an official mission, even if he knew that was technically the stuff that got him into trouble.

“Cool! Yeah, I can totally do that, you want me to give you a hand?” he offered, grin so wide it almost split his face in two. Derek hesitated for a moment, before giving one sharp nod.

“Yes. Please,” he answered. “I’ll – explain later tonight.” And with that, turned back on his heel and sat back down at his desk as if nothing had happened. Stiles watched him for a few seconds, and met Deaton’s eyes, the man’s brows raising in a silent question. Stiles shrugged, before looking back to his own computer, completely distracted.

“Hey. Stilinski,” came a hiss from beside him, and he looked over to see Erica watching him gleefully. He was sure she knew everyone could hear despite the whisper, but she didn’t seem to care. It was more for appearances, he knew, as a rule. “ _Tonight_? What the hell are you doing with Hale tonight?”

Despite himself, his cheeks turned just a little pink, and he shook his head.

“Nothing, get your mind out of the gutter. He drives me home, that’s all,” he whispered back, pretending a whisper actually worked in this place. “Mind your own business, Reyes. What’s it to you, anyway?”

She grinned her Cheshire grin, and bared her teeth with just a hint of fang, entirely unnecessary, he knew, she only did it for show. “Hale hasn’t spoken to anyone for years. No one. Much less give them a _ride_. Are you two fucking? Really?”

“No!” Stiles maintained, turning a little redder now, more out of the determination to prove it than embarrassment. “He gives me a ride, OK, we’re sort of friends. Jeez, does he have to fuck everyone he talks to?”

“Too bad,” Erica sighed, too melodramatic to be truly remorseful. “Would have been _hot_.”

Stiles was about to snap back some no doubt witty retort, but he was interrupted by a choked splutter from the other side of the room, and both their heads snapped around to see Derek looking over at both of them, his cheeks redder than Stiles’.

“Don’t worry,” he called across the room, chucking a piece of paper over at Erica. “I told her we’re not fucking. We’re just friends!”

Derek didn’t reply, just looked down at his desk, his fist curled around the pen in his hand.

He didn’t speak again, didn’t even _look up_ again, until it hit five on the dot, and then he was up, bag over his shoulder, standing over Stiles’ desk before he’d even had time to log out of his screen.

“OK, man, yeah, I know, I’m just – there we go, cool, we’re done,” Stiles said quickly, rushing to switch off his screen and stand. Derek said nothing, just waited for Stiles to move, walking behind him slowly, resisting the urge to place a hand in the small of his back and guide him firmly, the way his father always had when he was in trouble.

“What have you been saying about me?” he asked, the second they were in the car, his voice hard. He didn’t look over at him.

“I – what? Nothing. Is this about Erica? I swear, dude, I haven’t said anything, she just makes shit up,” Stiles answered, faltering for a moment. It had been a while since Derek was this outright hostile with him, and he forgot how much it triggered his own instinct to fight _back_.

He quelled it. He couldn’t just get into fights with everyone.

“You didn’t tell her we’re – together?” Derek asked again, voice still hard, if a little unsure now. His hands were clenched tight in his lap, and he was still looking straight ahead.

“No! I promise, I didn’t say anything. And I set her straight, told her we’re just friends,” Stiles assured firmly. If this had been Scott, or even maybe Isaac at this point, he would have reached over to clasp his shoulder, at the very least, if not grab his hands to unclench them.

Derek stayed quiet for a long while, before he let out one big huff, the tension seeping out from his shoulders.

“OK. Just – keep telling them. They fucking gossip like hell,” he said, brow furrowing. He turned the engine over, pulling onto the road, and it was like every other night, almost.

“Yeah, I know. I think it’s got more to do with me than with you. They hate me,” Stiles replied, sighing and relaxing, stretching his legs out properly.

“They don’t hate you,” Derek countered automatically, though he could have heard the skip in his own heartbeat. They did kind of hate Stiles. A little.

“They totally hate me,” Stiles corrected, glancing over at Derek and raising a brow. “I’m the one who fucks everything up, not to mention being, like, the only human.”

“They’re just cliquey. They have reservations. And you make a lot of stupid decisions.” Derek didn’t sound nasty the way he could sometimes, just matter of fact. Stiles tried to brush it off, but he flushed anyway.

“Yeah. I kinda do that. I do it a lot,” he admitted, though it was almost completely against his nature to do so. “Make some pretty good ones, too, though. Saved Scott’s ass more than once.”

Derek kept quiet at that, awkward as he always got after a while, so Stiles kept talking. That was his best defence. Just keep talking, always.

“So, what’s this coven thing?” he asked, moving right along.

Derek cleared his throat, glancing over at Stiles for a split second.

“I’ve been tracking activity across the city since you fought the last one,” he started. “And there’s been more of it since. More than there should be. Some – near my mother’s house. I don’t like it near … I want to work out what’s going on.”

Stiles’ face showed his surprise clearly, but he didn’t argue, instead nodding eagerly.

“Yeah, totally. That’s cool, I didn’t know you could do magic too.”

Derek shrugged, for once seeming genuinely nonchalant.

“A little. Nothing like you. Just to do my work, keep an eye on things. That’s not the point. I want to know what they’re doing, but I’m not enough to get into a coven,” Derek continued, seemingly impatient to discuss his own abilities. “I need someone to come with me. Work out what it is that’s going on.”

“Hey, I can do that, for sure. Sounds fun. Those witches last time were way stronger than they should have been, I kinda wondered _why_ ,” Stiles replied easily. “So, when do you wanna do this? I’ve got free time, like, all the time, pretty much, so whenever’s cool with you.”

Derek paused, glanced over again, and Stiles could see the disbelief plain over his features.

“I’ll – have to work something out. I’ll text you,” he said finally, and Stiles suspected that if he didn’t have such good self-control, he would have been sputtering.

“OK, yeah. Just let me know. It’ll be fun to be back in the field again,” Stiles added, smiling. “Oh, uh, does your Mom know about this?”

Derek shook his head, pulling over by the side of the road, outside his apartment.

“No. And I don’t want her knowing. She’ll just bitch about worrying over nothing, and wasting resources. So - keep it quiet. Just you and me. And if you want to back out, it’s fine. I get it,” he answered, for once the words coming easily from his mouth, like he didn’t have to think about his every word before he said it.

“My lips are sealed. And I won’t back out, this sounds great. I’ll see you tomorrow, right?” he said, waiting for Derek’s nod before he dragged up his bag and hopped out of the car. Derek took longer than usual this time to pull away. Stiles was almost inside by the time the Camaro’s tail lights were even halfway down the street.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for this being so delayed. Uni is a time-consuming mother of a thing, but I'm very much still writing.


	8. Chapter 8

His balance was pretty fantastic, he’d give himself that. Maybe it had something to do with the werewolf genes, which seemed to make him endlessly graceful, but he’d always been pretty good at balancing plates at home. He had three plates lined up each arm currently, nudging the swinging door to the kitchen open with his hip and narrowly avoiding a scowling waitress, dripping in beer.

He might have liked to ask how that had happened, but he barely got a chance to breathe for a slow moment here, let alone stop to talk to a co-worker. If he even worked up the guts to open his damn mouth, anyway. She didn’t look happy. She probably would have told him to fuck off.

Instead, he ignored it, went on with his work, placing the plates down onto the table packed with businessmen and their wives, ensuring each meal went to the right person. Call him pathetic, but he was at least a little proud of himself for managing to keep it all in his head perfectly. It might just have been waiting tables, but it was complicated, and it was work, and he was doing it well.

“What are you, blind? There’s empty glasses on the table, do your fucking job.” The words came from a man just by him as he was straightening back up, unburdened by the weight of the porcelain on his arms. The man’s suit jacket was far too big on him. He looked like a little boy playing dress up in his father’s clothes. Isaac could feel the words on the tip of his tongue, but rather than telling him to fuck off, he leaned over to pick up the wine glasses anyway.

“Sorry, sir,” he said quietly, ignoring the scoffs that came from the table. Assholes. He had to deal with assholes every night of the week, though, so he was well used to it. It was so much better to just shut up and take it and get his paycheck at the end of the week. If he was quiet and efficient and put up with their bullshit, they were more likely to leave a tip. He was pretty much living on tips right now.

Checking his watch as he dumped the glasses in the kitchen, earning a glower from the dishwasher, a kid with wilder hair than even him, that they made him tie back in a messy ponytail, Isaac allowed himself a quick sigh, one of only a few signs that this place was hell and he wanted out, before shoving it to the back of his mind and heading to the bathroom. Christ, he needed a break. Two minutes.

Half an hour, and then he could get out of here. It only left him twenty minutes to get to his next shift, but they never seemed to mind if he was a few minutes late. That was something, at least. And at least he could sit _down_ at that job. Doing sales over the phone was maybe one of the more awful jobs he’d ever had, but it meant he could sit in a heated office at night, and no one threw drinks at him, like the poor waitress.

He tried not to think about how tired he was. It only went downhill if he thought about it. He’d finished work at the office at 5, had a hurried dinner of fries and a burger as he drove to the restaurant to start at 6. He was hungry again now, but he wouldn’t have time to eat if he wanted to make the midnight shift. Thank god the last one of the night was only short.

Derek was already beginning to worry, he could tell. The man was trying to fix things, but his idea of fixing things was to just _pay_ for everything Isaac ever wanted. He wasn’t sure how to explain to him that that wasn’t what he _wanted_. He didn’t totally understand why Derek wouldn’t just give it up already, accept that he was going to work no matter what he said.

He missed him. A lot. But he’d gone a really long time not needing anyone, certainly not needing someone like Derek, so he could deal with not talking to him. Even if it made his chest constrict with guilt, and his wolf rebel, just wanting to submit to its Alpha happily. It wasn’t that simple. He had to stay human, at least partway.

Suppressing a yawn that would only bring him down hard, and he still had a whole shift to get through, Isaac stood, unlocked the cubicle, and made his way back out into the hot chaos of the kitchen. He always came away from this job sweaty and sticky and hot.

“Lahey,” a voice snapped from behind him, and he jumped, spinning around swiftly. His boss, perpetually red-faced, though Isaac never worked out why, it wasn’t like he was the chef, was glaring, eyes narrowed. “Don’t forget your timesheet,” he ordered, jabbing a finger to the sign in book, where Isaac had entirely forgotten to sign himself in. He swore under his breath, nodded, leaned over to pencil in the time he’d started, and –

 _Wobbled_.

He’d tried to lift his head again to straighten up, and the whole world went blurry, spinning. He stumbled back, surprised, still dizzy, straight into that same miserable waitress, the shatter and crash of plates being knocked to the ground ear-splitting.

There was a cacophony of noise, outraged shouts and cries of dismay, and he felt a hard shove before his legs gave out completely, the lights around the room getting blurrier and blurrier until it was just black, and – he was unconscious.

He didn’t know how long it had been when he came to, but he didn’t recognise where he was when he cracked his eyes open. He was on his back somewhere soft, and the ceiling was notably less yellow than the rest of the kitchen.

“Oh, thank Christ, he’s not dead. I thought I was done for. You know what OHS shit I would have had to deal with if he _died_ on shift?” exclaimed a voice above him, attributed to a large shadowy figure he couldn’t quite make out. He blinked, and the world came into focus a little sharper. The boss.

“Wh’happned?” he mumbled, voice slurry and weak. A girl’s voice answered him, from somewhere behind him.

“You passed out, sweetie,” she said, and somewhere in his mind, he recognised it as the waitress. Poor fucking girl. What a night. He tried to sit up, but he got dizzy all over again, and a strong hand pushed him back down.

“Don’t even think about getting back up. You’re done for the night,” she added firmly, and he felt so sick he didn’t even bother arguing. “You got someone we can call for you? I had a look in your phone, and there’s a Derek there. You want me to call Derek for you?” she added. She didn’t sound pissed off.

“No!” he blurted out. “No, _don’t_ call him,” he added, desperation tinging his voice. He must have looked distressed, because the girl nodded quickly, her eyes widening.

“OK, yeah, we won’t call him, but kid, you’re gonna need someone to come pick you up,” she told him, her voice softer than everyone else’s, like she cared about the fact that his head was throbbing painfully.

He thought maybe if he could just stop being _dizzy_ , he could get home on his own, he wouldn’t need to call anyone, but the steely look in her eyes made it clear that he wasn’t getting out of here with an escort. And there was no fucking way he was calling Derek.

He’d already fucked up enough with Derek. The man didn’t need all his worries and suspicions validated. He’d think that just because Isaac had passed out _once_ , that meant it was too much for him, and he’d feel perfectly justified in all the bitching and complaining he’d been doing about it.

He didn’t really have anyone else to call.

His father flickered into his mind, but he’d rather call _Derek_ than his Dad. He thought he’d probably rather call Talia goddamn Hale herself than his father. He’d only make things infinitely worse for himself if he dragged the man all the way across town to pick his sorry ass up. He’d already copped a broken arm for his outburst the other night. It healed overnight, and when the man had asked about it next week, Isaac had been able to pretend it had just been a sprain.

He’d looked disappointed.

“Isaac? You with us?” the girl asked, and it sounded like she’d been talking for a while this time, and he’d just missed the first few attempts.

“Yeah,” he rasped out. “Yeah, I – “

But he stopped there, because there weren’t any more words to come out.

“You don’t have anyone to call?”

That voice sounded worried, bleeding concern, and he was _sick_ of concern. Sick to death of it. If he could take everyone’s fucking concern and turn that into money, maybe he’d be doing better off. He shook his head, after a moment, before realising that probably looked like he was saying, yes, he had no one, and that would only elicit more sympathy.

“No, I can. I’ve got a friend I can call,” he answered, and it was only as he was saying the words that he realised it might actually be true. “Stiles. I can call Stiles.”

“OK. You want me to find him in your phone, call him for you?” she asked, and when he looked over at her again, she was the only one left in the office. The looming figure of the boss had gone, and he was lying here on the faded pink couch with a waitress who smelled like beer, who was the only one offering to help him out.

“Yes, please,” he replied, and if his voice cracked, she didn’t say anything.

He closed his eyes while she dug in his bag, looking for the phone again, and thumbed her way through his contacts. God, his head hurt. He was tired. His back hurt from where he’d fallen, he thought, and there was a lingering sense of failure.

“Hi, is this Stiles? Yeah, I work with him. No, he’s OK, he just had a bit of a fall. I think it’s best if someone comes to get him.” Isaac would be able to hear Stiles’ voice from the phone if he listened hard enough, but that would hurt his head even more, so he didn’t bother. The girl’s voice lowered like a whisper when she spoke again.

“I don’t think he’s very well. Can you please come make sure he gets home OK? He didn’t sound like he – OK. Yeah, OK. Thank you. We’ll see you soon.”

He could hear the click of Stiles hanging up, and then the exhale of the waitress. It occurred to him he didn’t know her name.

“Alright, sweetie, he’s on his way. I have to go clean up, so. You gonna be OK waiting in here?” She sounded like she regretted leaving him, and he realised cleaning up was probably cleaning up the mess he made.

“I can help,” he offered weakly, trying to sit up again. He was a little less dizzy this time around, but he still wobbled, and the world still got blurry around him.

“No. Lie down. Wait for your friend. I’ve got it.”

He wanted to protest, get up and help anyway, but she was probably right. He didn’t think he could get up if he wanted to, anyway. He murmured some hum of assent, and she settled his phone on his chest, opening the door, letting in an awful sudden screech of sound and light, before it disappeared again, and her with it.

He closed his eyes, before opening them again a moment after to check the time on his phone. 11.55. Fuck, that was late. Stiles was going to have to come all the way out here at midnight. He intended on keeping his eye on the time, but his eyes drooped, and without realising it, he was asleep.

“He just passed out, I don’t know what happened.”

“What, like, in the middle of the kitchen? Shit.”

“He looks so _tired_.”

“Yeah, guy works three jobs. No wonder he’s tired. Listen, thanks for calling me, that was awesome of you.”

“That’s OK, I wanted him to go home with _someone_ , and he asked for you.”

“He asked for _me_?”

“Yeah. I asked him about the other guy in his phone, but. He wanted you. You’ll make sure he’s OK, right? The boss wasn’t totally happy, but I talked him into letting him keep his job.”

“Yeah, yeah, ‘course. Shit, that’s really great, thank you ….?”

“Oh, Maisie.”

“Thanks, Maisie. Seriously. I’ll take him home.”

Isaac peeled his eyes open, the voices drifting into his head slowly, like before.

“Yo, sleeping beauty. You ready to get the hell outta dodge?” Stiles asked, peering over him and squinting, like he could feel he was doing himself.

Stiles looked tired, too, but probably not as bad as he looked. He could vaguely feel the back of his head throbbing, but ignored it for now in favour of blinking at Stiles, like if he blinked enough times, he might blur at the edges and disappear completely.

He was still standing there after five blinks, waiting, his forehead crinkled in concern.

“Time’sit?” he asked, voice small and tinny to his own ears, somehow infinitely more exhausted with each syllable.

“Quarter to one,” Stiles answered, and Isaac groaned, trying to sit up for the third time. The dizziness started, but Stiles ducked down to catch him properly, one arm around his shoulders, the other helping hold him up, one hand braced on his chest.

“Woah, man, easy, you’ll just topple over again,” Stiles warned, his voice warping and dipping in Isaac’s head, though in reality, it was probably perfectly normal. He swallowed hard to stop his stomach churning, and hesitated before moving anymore.

He could try to get up on his own. But he felt nauseous, his head hurt, his eyes hurt. His legs felt prickly with pins and needles, and when he tried to move too fast, everything tilted out of focus. He wasn’t going to get anywhere like this. He felt a burst of fury with himself, but quelled it. He couldn’t lash out yet.

Huffing out a resigned, frustrated sigh, he leaned up and curled his arms around Stiles’ neck, to try to steady himself as he stood, wobbling a little. Stiles was surprisingly firm to lean against it, holding up his weight easily.

“S’rry. S’late,” he muttered, but Stiles scoffed from just a little ways beneath him, less than a head, and huh, he was shorter than him, same as Derek, shaking his head.

“Dude, don’t even, it’s cool. I was up anyway, Netflix is a cruel mistress,” Stiles brushed off, but from the look of his bedraggled hair, Isaac was pretty sure he was asleep when the waitress – Maisie – called him. He staggered his way out to the parking lot with Stiles’ help, bag slung over the human’s shoulder, ignoring the looks they got from the patrons.

There was a car in the parking lot he didn’t recognise, certainly not Stiles’ Jeep, or Derek’s Camaro. He didn’t have too much time to think about it, though, because Stiles piled him into the passenger seat gently and joining him on the other side, roughly jerking the engine to life.

“Don’t take me home,” Isaac managed to mutter, but apparently, he didn’t need to, because Stiles already had his mouth open to speak.

“Yeah, I won’t,” he promised, taking them shakily around a corner. He felt slightly sicker. Vaguely, he wondered if he was going to throw up, and decided if he was, he better not do it in the car. What a way to pay Stiles back for his kindness.

“Where’re we going?” he asked after a long moment, after his stomach settled a little, when Stiles stayed silent, taking them down well-lit streets to the nicer parts of town.

“By the looks of you, dude, with the dizzy stuff and the passing out and hitting your head, I’m _pretty_ sure you’ve got a concussion, so I can’t exactly let you go back to sleep, or you’ll fuck yourself up even more,” Stiles answered, tone perfectly conversational, as if they weren’t discussing his pretty shaky health.

Isaac wanted to argue, but couldn’t find anything to argue _about_ , not really, so he kept his mouth shut and let Stiles take them to a café in the middle of a nice looking street, one he hadn’t been to before. He waved off the help out of the car impatiently, able to walk on his own, if a little unsteadily, and followed Stiles in through the door, taking a seat across from him in a booth, the red vinyl of the seats still soft against his back.

“I must look like hell,” he muttered, embarrassed, hiding his face behind a menu when a middle-aged woman, long thick dark hair cascading over her dark skin, came past to take their orders. Stiles ordered him some sickly sweet sounding coffee without consulting him.

“Yeah, you do kinda look awful,” the human replied, unapologetic. “So. Wanna tell me what happened?”

No. Isaac didn’t, at all. He barely knew what happened himself. He’d passed out, and fallen hard, and if he really hit his head like Stiles said, then _yeah_ , he must have been right about the blood he thought he felt.  

“Guess I fainted,” he mumbled. He was acting slightly petulant, he knew, but it didn’t seem to matter too much right now. Stiles snorted, hands fiddling with the sugar packets on the table in front of him.

“Uh, yeah, dude, you fainted, I gathered that much,” he said with a roll of his eyes. “I wanna know _why_ you fainted. You look seriously shit right now.”

“I don’t know,” Isaac snapped, face hard and nasty for a moment, before he realised, and softened. “Sorry. Sorry. I just. I don’t know. I was fine one minute, and then the next – out.”

Stiles contemplated that for a while, fingers screwing up and smoothing out the corner of a napkin over and over again.

“Huh. Well, OK. I’m no doctor, but I think I know what’s been going on. I think you’re just really fucking tired, man. You look _exhausted_. And I’ve passed out in college before, you know, middle of a lecture, up too late studying for mid-terms,” he said finally, shrugging, like it was no big deal.

Which was nice. It wasn’t a big deal. At least Stiles was treating him like an adult. If Derek found out about this, he’d treat him like a little kid who should have known better.

“I guess I was a little tired, yeah,” he admitted, running a hand through his hair, and bringing back blood on his hand when he looked. Oh. So he was bleeding.

He looked up when he sensed a figure standing over them, and there was the waitress, holding their coffees, looking at his bloody hand, concerned.

“My goodness, sweetheart, are you alright?” she asked, a definite Southern twang to her ‘r’s. Stiles grinned up at her, cheeky.

“He’s fine, Abilene, he just fell,” he waved off, making grabby hands for his coffee. She watched him for a moment more, as if unconvinced, but handed him his mug, too, stepping away with a hand brushed through Stiles’ hair.

Taking a sip, Isaac was surprised to find that it didn’t taste like liquid sugar as he expected, instead pleasantly warm down his throat, caramel coating the inside of his mouth. He perked up a tiny bit, stomach not nearly as churned up.

“What time is it?” he asked suddenly, spine straightening up in horror.

“Like, 1.30 by now, why?” Stiles asked, raising a brow.

“Fuck,” he swore, moving to slide out of the booth, movements urgent but slightly sloppy from the buzz his head was giving him. “I gotta go.”

“Whoa, hey, no, sit your ass back down, Lahey, where do you think you’re going?” Stiles said quickly, and with a small little _whoosh_ of energy, Isaac was knocked back into his seat, eyes wide.

“What the hell?”

Stiles offered him a thin, falsely apologetic smile, shrugging.

“Sorry, but you know the only way I can get you wolves to do anything is to use my own advantages,” he countered, and Isaac wondered why he was so flippant about talking about this so _openly_. Talia would have been appalled.

“I have to get to work, I have another job,” Isaac hissed, trying to get up again, only to find himself plastered to his seat, the invisible wall of resistance impossible to breach. “ _Stiles_.”

“Isaac, take a look at yourself,” Stiles snapped, voice hard and firm. “You’re bleeding from your head, which even though I know has _healed_ by now, still isn’t good. You passed out at work because you were so tired, and had to have me come to get you. It’s one thirty in the fucking morning, you honestly think I’m gonna let you go to another job right now?”

He looked pretty pissed off, actually, more so than Isaac would have expected, and he sat quietly for a second, taken aback, before he felt anger bubble back up.

“I don’t think it’s any of your damn _business_ , Stiles, you don’t fucking understand, I have to get to work,” he snarled, slamming a hand down onto the table and trying again to stand. Nothing.

“It’s my business when I get dragged out of bed to come pick you up,” Stiles countered, matching his snarl effortlessly, his lip curling up. “It’s my business when you’ve made yourself sick like this, you idiot. And it’s definitely my business since you’re my _friend_.”

Isaac wrinkled his nose up when the bitter scent of _hurt_ hit the air, and realised he’d hurt Stiles’ feelings. He wanted to argue some more, maybe act like a spoiled child, shout and say truly cruel things like he knew he was capable of, but in the end, he deflated, cradling his head in one hand.

“I have to go to work,” he tried again, but it was weak and small and quiet, like he knew it wasn’t going to have any effect. Stiles huffed, pulling out his phone impatiently, and shoving it at Isaac.

“Put in the damn number, I’ll call for you,” he ordered, and it was so firm and determined that Isaac couldn’t summon the energy to say no. He dialled, resigned, and pushed it back to Stiles, sighing as he began to speak, voice getting a little short when the man on the other end began to question him.

“He’s sick, he can’t come in,” Stiles explained, voice straining with the effort to stay polite. “ _Sick_. Migraine. Yeah, good, OK. Jesus,” he exclaimed, jabbing the screen hard to end the call, pocketing the phone again. “Your boss is an asshole,” he added to Isaac.

“I should have been there half an hour ago, he’s probably just irritated,” Isaac defended, but he didn’t put too much effort into it.

“You know this is bullshit, right? It’s bad enough that you work til midnight, I can’t freaking believe you have _another_ job to go to,” Stiles said, but his voice was back to casual again, anger seemingly gone. The magic around Isaac was still there, though.

“I need the money,” Isaac answered shortly, the way he had with Derek, closed off and matter of fact.

“Understandable, yeah, but, like, this is too much. You’ve got a roof and food, right?” Stiles asked, clearly waiting for an answer Isaac wasn’t too eager to give.

“Yes, but –“

“So you’re doing OK. You’re not gonna be homeless anytime soon, you can stick to two jobs,” Stiles barrelled on, as if he hadn’t spoken.

“Stiles, will you _stop_? Jesus, I can’t just have two, I have to work hard enough,” he pleaded.

“Hard enough for who?”

“My _Dad_ , I’m not fucking working hard enough, if I can just do _more_ , it’d be fine!” It came out as somewhat of an explosion, too loud for the near-empty café. Stiles let it hang in the air between them, until Isaac paled.

“You’re seriously gonna hurt yourself if you keep doing this,” he said calmly. “And your Dad’s not a very good guy if he can watch you be this tired all the time with no complaints.” His voice was very steady; purposefully so, like he was being careful.

“I have to,” Isaac sighed. He was sick of explaining himself about this. _Sick_ of it. He was a grown man, this was his decision, and it wasn’t as if he could roll up his sleeves and show Stiles the fingerprint bruises all up his arms, explain that _that_ was why he had to keep doing it.

“Derek’s, like, super worried about you,” Stiles admitted quietly, sipping at his coffee. Isaac looked up in surprise, a little ripple of betrayal forming. He took a sip of his own coffee to keep from snapping again.

“You spoke to Derek about me?”

“I was worried about you, dude, and he’s the only other one you talk to,” Stiles justified hotly. Isaac opened his mouth, but he got cut off again quickly. “And don’t worry, I won’t say anything about it, I know you two don’t want anyone knowing. Don’t know _why_ , but I can keep a secret.”

“What did he say?” he asked tentatively. It wasn’t as if he cared. He’d made his feelings clear to Derek. He didn’t care what he thought, even if he was his Alpha.

“That you were working some crazy three job thing, and you weren’t talking to him,” Stiles answered. “And he sounded pretty cut up over it.”

“He did?” Derek was upset that he wasn’t talking to him. Huh. He couldn’t help the warm feeling in his chest, much as he didn’t want to indulge it.

“Yeah, he did. I guess he misses you.” Stiles was smiling now, and Isaac didn’t like the look of that at all. It looked smug.

“I haven’t gone anywhere,” he argued, but that was a damn lie, and they both knew it. “He doesn’t get it, either.” Derek probably did get it better than anyone, but he still didn’t _understand_.

“Cos he’s super rich?” Stiles snorted. “Yeah, I get that. Sucks when you live with royalty, they don’t know how to slum it with us peasants.”

Isaac blinked once, before shaking his head vehemently. It made it throb again.

“He hasn’t always been rich,” he corrected, defiant. He was always fiery when he was defending Derek. “He did it really tough when he was in college.”

“What? His whole family’s rolling in it,” Stiles protested, brow furrowing. “He’s a trust fund baby.”

“Talia cut all the kids off when they went to college,” Isaac countered, before barking out a short laugh. “You seriously thought he was some spoiled brat?” Stiles went red, and Isaac laughed harder.

“He’s rich _now_ , OK, how was I supposed to know?” Stiles spluttered, but Isaac just kept laughing, tears gathering at the edge of his eyes. In between laughs, somewhere, they’d turned into sobs, and he couldn’t make himself stop, shoulders shaking.

“Oh. Shit. Uh. Isaac. It’s OK,” Stiles said, awkward and hesitant. “Um. God. Seriously, it’s – are you OK?”

Isaac shook his head, the tears rolling out from the sides of his eyes now, perfect uninterrupted arcs down his cheeks, until he brought his hands up to smear through them.

“I’m so _tired_ ,” he choked out, voice wet with tears. It cracked, and this time, someone did pick him up on it. Stiles reached out, movements still a little jerky and awkward, and took his hand. Isaac jerked back on instinct, but all it did was push his sleeve up, and then the bruises were on full display.

“ _Christ_ ,” Stiles breathed, the horror painted all over his face. “Isaac, what the fuck?”

Isaac snatched his hand back, pulling the sleeve down hard, glancing around to see if anyone else had seen.

“It’s nothing. Don’t worry about it,” he brushed off, but his skin was crawling with panic now.

“That’s not nothing,” Stiles said quietly, but he didn’t move to touch him again, seeming to know better. “I know you don’t wanna talk about it, but that’s not _nothing_.” His voice was shaking now, and Isaac could smell anger wafting off him in waves.

“I don’t know who the hell is doing that to you, and I know you won’t tell me. But that’s seriously not OK, tell me you know that, at least,” he pressed. He looked like _he_ was going to cry, so Isaac nodded quickly.

“Yes, OK, I know, it’s not good, but just – forget about it, please.” He sounded desperate now, he knew, sniffling and hoarse, face red and tear-streaked, blood in his hair and on his hands. “Please, Stiles.”

Stiles huffed, ran a hand through his hair, which did nothing to tame it, and looked like he was wrestling with himself internally, emotions flitting over his features quick as a flash.

“I’m not forgetting about it,” he started, and held up a hand so Isaac would let him keep talking. “But I won’t say any more about it. Not right now. And I want you to come to me next time something bad happens. Me or Derek.”

That was a better compromise than he thought Stiles was going to offer, so he accepted it almost immediately, nodding.

“Yeah. I promise. I can handle myself, I just. I can’t – “

“Yeah, it’s OK. I get it. Don’t _like_ it, but I get it.” He sounded like he actually did get it. Somehow. Isaac doubted he’d ever been where he was right now, but he seemed to really understand. Like Derek did.

“Sorry you had to come get me,” he said, after another long sip of now lukewarm coffee. Stiles drained his own mug, and shook his head.

“I don’t care, man, it’s fine. You needed someone, it’s all good. But we gotta talk about this job thing,” Stiles said, fixing him with a determined stare. He wasn’t getting out of this, then.

“I really need the money for my Dad,” he explained. If Stiles was going to push this, he’d better answer honestly. “He doesn’t think I work hard enough, and I show up late to see him sometimes, so if I had a car, I could get there on time.”

A flicker of realisation dawns over Stiles’ face, but as quickly as it came, it was gone again. He nodded, and leaned in a little.

“My Jeep’s gonna be out of the shop soon, thank fuck. I miss my baby,” he said wistfully, before grinning and returning to the topic. “So you could borrow her when you need her. If you wanted. You don’t see him that often, do you?”

Isaac’s jaw dropped, and he stayed frozen for a moment, like a clown at a funfair.

“Are you serious?” he asked, before he realised, no, he couldn’t do that, that was way too much.

“Yeah, it’s no big deal. If you really need it just to see your Dad, y’know, it’s fine,” Stiles answered. “I’m guessing you don’t wanna use Derek’s amazing car, cos your Dad knows what that looks like, right?”

Isaac stared, but Stiles didn’t lower his eyes. He had a feeling that the human knew exactly what he was doing; he spent enough time around wolves to know that that was a _challenge_.

“Right,” he answered finally, caving. Stiles won that round, then. “He’s not Derek’s biggest fan.”

“There you go, then. You want to?” Stiles sounded casual, and easy, not at all like Isaac had just admitted his hugest secret to him.

“It would only be twice a week,” Isaac assured. “I only see him twice a week, I go for dinner, and I’d bring it back that night, so you could still go to work in the morning.”

“Dude, it’s fine, seriously. I should have her back next week, so you know, just text me what nights you need it, and I’ll get it over to you.”

Isaac considered for a long moment, before letting out a deep sigh of relief.

“Thank you so much,” he sighed, shoulders slumping. “God, thank you. For picking me up, and this, and – everything.”

“It’s fine, Isaac. But you’re gonna dump this third job shit, right?” Stiles asked, brow raising.

“Yeah,” he answered, and just saying the words was like taking a weight off his shoulders. “Yeah, I’ll quit. I still have to work at the restaurant, but that doesn’t kill me.”

Stiles grinned, clearly pleased, and darted his hand out across the table to grab Isaac’s mug, draining that one too.

“Start talking to Derek again, too, OK? He seriously looked miserable,” Stiles added, and Isaac could hear genuine concern in his voice. He filed that away for later inspection.

“I miss him too,” he admitted, his voice breaking a little. “You’re, like, the only person he ever talks to that’s not me. It’s good for him.”

Stiles looked a little puzzled at that, but then his smile melted into a much happier one, and he stood, holding out a hand to Isaac. He took it, letting Stiles help him up, and barely protested when the man slapped a ten down onto the table and called out a goodbye to Abilene.

“I just wanna _sleep_ ,” he groaned, sliding back into the car, and Stiles laughed, rattling the engine to life and heading back to Derek’s.

“Yeah, I think I’ve kept you up long enough, go to bed,” he approved, yawning himself. Isaac felt a pang of guilt, but it would do more damage to his already shredded dignity to apologise again, so he stayed quiet until they pulled up in front of the loft.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, yeah?” Stiles asked, glancing over at him. Isaac nodded, yawning, and rubbed a hand over his eyes, popping the door open. He moved to get out, before thinking twice, and turned quick, too quick for human reflexes, throwing his arms around Stiles’ neck.

“ _Oof_ ,” the human grunted in surprise, but followed it up with a laugh and hugged back.

“Thank you,” Isaac repeated quietly into Stiles’ neck, before getting a hold of himself and pulling back, quickly getting out of the car before he could do much more to embarrass himself. “See you tomorrow. Hope you won’t be too tired.”

“No one cares if I sleep at my desk,” Stiles shot back, but he was smiling, and when Isaac shut the door with a _thunk_ , Stiles took off.

Making his way up to the loft tiredly, he almost fell asleep again on the wall of the elevator, the _ding_ waking him back up when the doors opened into the hall, and he slid the door open, stepping inside. Everything was dark, but his eyes adjusted, and he padded in quietly, determined not to wake Derek.

Derek, who’d been worried about him. Who had tried really fucking hard to make things better for him, and he’d thrown it back in his face. Derek, who was _upset_ they weren’t talking, upset enough to talk about it with Stiles.

He reached his bedroom door, but the thought of opening it and going to his own empty bed was almost unbearable. Instead, he stripped his clothes off, leaving them in a pool in the hall, and gently opened the door to Derek’s room, praying he wouldn’t wake up as he lifted the covers very carefully and slid in beside him.

“’Zaac?” Derek slurred, still half asleep, even as he rolled over to bring himself closer.

“It’s late. I’m tired. Shut up,” he whispered, but curled himself in against the other man’s body, letting Derek rest his head against his chest as he fell back into sleep, snuffling against his skin. He wrapped an arm around the man’s waist, closed his eyes, and was asleep before their heartbeats could synch up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know it might seem like the plot is super slow going, but that's just because - well, because it is. I broke this chapter up because it was getting way too long, so enjoy Isaac with low self esteem. Thanks to everyone who have commented, bookmarked and left kudos.


	9. Chapter 9

Scott was, and always would be, his best friend. Scott and he were something special, and he knew that damn well. Scott wasn’t ever something Stiles liked to take for granted, even though he knew sometimes it happened. He wasn’t a completely _perfect_ human being, as much as he told people he was. (He was also painfully aware that no one on this Earth believed it, too.)

Scotty McCall, though, was even more special than he was, because he was, in Stiles’ humble opinion, just about the closest thing there was to a perfect human being. Scott, and his Dad. (And his Mom, but he didn’t like to think too much about that).

Scott was pretty much the walking definition of best friend ever. He put up with Stiles’ arrogance, and nudged him back into line when he was acting like too much of an asshole. Scott was pretty much the best guy to see movies with, because he didn’t interrupt with pointless commentary, but he didn’t mind when Stiles _did_.

And yeah, OK, they’d had their differences. They were bound to, when they’d known each other for a good chunk of each other’s lives. Stiles got on everyone’s nerves eventually, even when he was trying to police his behaviour into something more socially acceptable, and Scott could get seriously bull-headed sometimes about decisions he decided were great ideas.

The longest, though, Stiles had ever stayed at the guy, and vice versa, was a week and a half. Technically, Scott had stayed pissed with Stiles in high school for a good 13 days, pretty agonising ones, but they stayed on good terms, mostly.

They’d gone to college together, shared a dorm room, and flunked classes together because of too much partying. They’d shared their first kiss together, which had resulted in Scott’s confirmation that he was pretty firmly straight, and Stiles’ realisation that he pretty firmly _wasn’t_. There wasn’t much they didn’t share, actually, not in about ten years.

So, yeah, it did kind of suck lately that Scott wasn’t around so much. Stiles wasn’t _angry_ , exactly, because Scott hadn’t really done anything wrong, he’d just been busy, but it was strange. They both had the weekend off, Scott not on call for once, and Stiles free for another week before his second meeting. While Stiles had half been expecting Scott to bail again, and had mentally prepared for a S.H.I.E.L.D marathon in his sweats, he was pleasantly surprised to find Scott at home with him all weekend.

They were sprawled out on the sofa, Stiles’ legs in Scott’s lap, barely paying any attention to the reality program on the screen, blaring out something about Prince Harry (surely those girls didn’t _really_ believe?), and Stiles had missed this. He wasn’t gonna say it out loud, but he was pretty sure Scott already knew.

“It wasn’t like I meant to knock the bag off the hook,” Scott was explaining, a hint of guilt behind his words. “I just hit a bit too hard, and now they think I’m some sort of insane body builder steroid type.”

Stiles snorted, eyeing up and down Scott’s body critically.

“Dude, I’m fairly sure you’re _still_ way too small to be a body builder steroid type,” he pointed out, a slow grin curling over his face. Scott nudged him in mock-offense, barely containing his laugh.

“You’re still a scrawny human compared to me,” he teased, earning him a good whack from Stiles, which really, was barely more than a brush to Scott’s superhuman strength, he knew.

“I don’t _need_ great hulking muscles,” Stiles countered, letting out a proud huff. “You Neanderthals might need all that brawn, but _I_ have brains. And magic.”

Actually, he had more brains than he had either brawn or magic, and he relied more on his brain anyway. The magic was nice, admittedly, he did enjoy having a little one up on the wolves he surrounded himself with. But he didn’t depend on it like he knew some people did. A lot of humans who dabbled in it like he did got addicted, too drunk on the power rush. Everyone knew he had an addictive personality, but he’d been careful from the get-go not to let it go to his head.

“Who’s on field duty and who’s on sycophant duty?” Scott asked pointedly, raising a brow. He looked smug already; there wasn’t much Stiles could say to counter that. Scott had him and he knew it. Instead, he scowled, kicked his feet down hard, eliciting an uncannily dog-like yelp.

“Mutt,” he added, but it was fonder than anything. They fell into a companionable silence, the kind you can only achieve when you’ve been friends with someone long enough to understand their silence.

“So Isaac seems kind of into you,” Scott said after a few minutes, and though he sounded as if he was trying to be casual, Stiles could see right through it. That didn’t mean it shocked him any less. His eyes almost popped right out of their sockets, incredulity making itself clear all over his face.

“Dude, _what_?” he said, aghast. He hadn’t even been aware that Isaac and Scott were hanging out, let alone enough to be discussing any potential _interest_ in him. Scott pulled his particular brand of confused puppy dog face, the brand that said he was trying to act innocent but knew way more than he was letting on, and Stiles was having none of it.

“He seems like he’s into you,” Scott continued, shrugging as if it was nothing. “He’s been talking about you all week like you’re the Second fucking coming.” His face screwed up in distaste, and for Scott to be sick of hearing about Stiles, it really must have been a lot.

Stiles, meanwhile, greatly resembled a goldfish, mouth gaping open and shut. He hadn’t seen much of the guy, certainly not enough to hear any adoring gospel on the topic of _him_.

“What the hell, man, why?” he asked, genuinely puzzled. Scott snorted, shaking his head. Stiles got the distinct impression he was enjoying having information Stiles didn’t know.

“He was telling me about how _nice_ you are, and how awesome it is that you’re loaning him the Jeep,” Scott explained, rolling his eyes. It was only boring to him because he would have done the exact same thing in the same situation. Stiles thought very privately that they both got their saviour complex from Mrs. McCall, who was forever taking in strays.

“That doesn’t mean he’s _into_ me,” Stiles argued. He wasn’t going to lie and say that the thought of someone wanting him wasn’t a nice one, or that it didn’t flatter him, because it was always nice to be wanted. Stiles had had his share of admirers in college, and it wasn’t like he was the virgin he’d been in high school, but there hadn’t ever been anything serious. He had trouble finding someone who’d put up with him all the time. And the whole – wolfy magic lifestyle thing was a pretty major obstacle.

“I know what a crush looks like, you idiot,” Scott shot back, fixing him with a hard, determined glower. Exactly the kind of look reserved for when he was being a real moron. “And he definitely has a crush. Or at least the beginnings of a crush. What the hell did you do to him? You didn’t put a _love spell_ on him, did you?” he added, looking appalled.

Stiles drew himself up, taking his legs back and glaring in return.

“No, I didn’t put a fucking spell on him,” he snapped, offended. He’d joked before about love spells, but he’d never use one. Not if he could help it. He was a bad person sometimes, but not to the level of love spells. Not that bad. “And fuck you for thinking I would.”

Scott’s face softened, and Stiles didn’t need to be able to sniff the air to know he felt guilty.

“Look, that’s not what I meant. I know you wouldn’t. And I was going to say you wouldn’t need a spell anyway, man,” he amended. Stiles could have kept arguing about it, but Scott always worked out how to make him feel better.

“Yeah, well,” he grumbled, letting go of his hurt with each word. “I don’t do love spells. And I don’t know what I’ve done. I mean. There was the other night, but – “

Scott’s whole posture changed, straightening up and leaning in, looking outraged.

“ _The other night?_ ” he exclaimed. “Are you telling me you slept together and you didn’t tell me?” If there was an illustrated definition of indignant, Scott’s face right now would sum it right up. Stiles dissolved into astounded laughter, shoulders shaking.

“No, Scott!” he gasped out. “Jesus, no. Believe me, if I’d gotten some, you’d know all about it, I’d be bragging like hell,” he added. “No, I helped him out with something the other night, I guess he’s pretty happy about it.”

“What did you help with?” Scott asked, assured that Stiles hadn’t been holding out on his love life details. (If he winced thinking about his own love life, Stiles didn’t notice).

Stiles hesitated, unsure if Isaac would really want him to be telling other people, but soon after decided that Scott didn’t count as other people.

“He, like, passed out at work,” Stiles started. “He’d been working three jobs, and I guess it was seriously getting to him, because he full on fainted. And he wanted them to call me, so I went to pick him up.”

Scott looked as if Stiles had told him something truly horrifying. They were both no stranger to long shifts. Stiles’ Dad worked long doubles at the station in an effort to keep Stiles as happy as he could, wanting for nothing, when his mother died. He also suspected that the man did it so he wasn’t left idle with his own grief. John Stilinski and grief didn’t end up so well. It usually ended up smelling like whiskey. And Mrs. McCall worked even longer hours in the hospital, though that was down to her sheer incapability to let anyone go without help.

“Why the hell was he working so much?” Scott asked. Much as Scott didn’t count as other people, Stiles wasn’t going to tell him _that_ detail.

“I don’t know, man, guess he’s just really broke,” he lied, priding himself on the ability not to let his heart skip over the words. It had taken a long time to learn that little skill. “But he was pretty fucked. I picked him up, told him he could borrow my Jeep when he needed it, and took him home. Wasn’t that big of a deal.”

“Well, he clearly thinks it was,” Scott countered, looking somewhat dubious. Either he thought it was a big deal, or he thought Stiles had done something untoward and wasn’t admitting to it.

“It _wasn’t_ ,” Stiles reaffirmed, shaking his head, though the thought was beginning to stick in his head. It hadn’t been that big of a deal. He’d just done what anyone would do. Maybe, though, Isaac wasn’t used to people being decent human beings.

“Whatever, man, either way, you’re his hero right now,” Scott brushed off, obviously done with talking about it now. If Stiles thought it wouldn’t genuinely piss him off, he would have badgered him into giving more details, but as it was, he let it rest. For now.

“What’s going on with _your_ love life?” he asked instead, diverting attention. Scott liked talking about himself, and whoever he was with, Stiles knew that from experience. When he fell, he fell hard, every single time.

“I don’t have a love life,” Scott answered, scowling. His shoulders tensed, though, something Stiles didn’t miss. “I’m sadly alone.”

That seemed unrealistic, but then, the alternative was unrealistic, too. Scott always, always told him about new girlfriends, and it seemed ridiculous that he wouldn’t this time. So he must really be single. Except, Stiles had known him long enough to be able to tell when he was being laid regularly, and he was exhibiting all the right symptoms.

“Aw, Scotty, not totally alone, you have me,” he teased, rather than actually asking any real questions which might have stirred things up. Like where he was all the times he wasn’t home, and when he skipped out on social engagements with Stiles.

Scott snorted, but nudged Stiles playfully with his ankle anyway, a grin breaking out across his face.

“I thought we covered this in high school, Stiles, you’re not my type,” he parried, light-hearted, barely even moving from the shove Stiles gave him.

“It’s nice having you home for a while though, no joke,” Stiles admitted after a minute, voice sober. “I haven’t seen you properly in ages, dude.”

“Yeah. Me too,” Scott answered, but his voice was strangely hollow, and Stiles could sense guilt. Some serious guilt.

“Guess work’s getting pretty busy, huh?” he prodded, glancing sideways.

“Yeah. Yeah, I guess. I mean – Talia’s giving me more and more to do,” Scott answered, looking uneasy. Stiles could have kept pushing, but he’d gone far enough tonight. He’d figure out this mystery eventually. He had to.

* * *

“Will you shut the fuck up about Stiles?” Derek snapped, shooting Isaac a glare and resisting the urge to throw the glass bauble the younger man had brought home, in the hope of decorating a very small Christmas tree in a pot he’d bought last week.

Isaac fell quiet for a moment, the dreadful silent Derek tried to avoid, but soon recovered himself. He was getting better at not taking Derek’s shit. That was a victory, he was sure. And since the kid had decided to start talking to him again, he was more than happy to listen to anything he wanted to talk about. There was just a limit of how much he could hear about Stiles Stilinski.

“Don’t be an asshole,” Isaac snapped back, without flinching. So much better, every day. “And I’m just telling you he’s a good guy, you should try talking to him some more.”

Derek sighed, rubbing the heel of his hand into his eyes, tired. He’d heard about Stiles for days now, and though he was beyond grateful (he couldn’t work out how to say thank you in a big enough way to make it mean something), he wasn’t enjoying being pushed into being social by the one member of his family who had before, held out on it.

Vaguely, he thought introducing Isaac to his sister and mother was definitely a bad idea.

“I have no interest in making any friends, Isaac,” he explained shortly, for what seemed like the hundredth time. The man just scoffed, as if he’d said something absurd, and disregarded him completely.

“Of course you want friends, you’re a werewolf. And you can’t say I don’t know, because you’re the one who taught me wolves are supposed to be in packs. Well, that means other people, and _that_ means friends. Everyone needs friends,” he argued, trying to hang a tiny crescent moon made of glittery glass from the higher branches.

“I have you,” Derek replied, leaning back in his armchair and watching as Isaac’s fingers shook, trying to act so delicately. It was hard doing small little acts like that without claws sliding out, especially when Isaac was still learning how to master his control.

“I’m not enough,” Isaac answered almost immediately, finally leaning back, pleased with the moon hanging prettily from the tree. “I’m one person. You should have more friends. I _know_ I’m not one to talk, but at least I’m trying,” he added, anticipating Derek’s next retort.

And he was trying. Definitely trying. Derek had been watching him try for a long while, and he was only now getting somewhere with it.

“Good for you,” he grumbled, crossing his arms and ignoring the look Isaac shot him. The badgering at him always got worse this time of year. His family seemed to think that he couldn’t be alone at Christmas without having some very sad and dark thoughts. Which wasn’t true. He was just fine alone at Christmas, because he was just fine alone the rest of the year. And this year he wasn’t even really alone. This year he had Isaac.

“I’m just trying to help,” Isaac muttered, sounding remarkably like _he_ did when he was in a bad mood. It occurred to him that that was either of a sign of his bad habits rubbing off on Isaac, or that he acted a lot like a petulant pup.

“I know,” he sighed, leaning over to help decorate the tree, fingers closing over a single silver bell that tinkled when he lifted it. “There’s just only so much I can hear about one person, alright?” One person who already confused the hell out of him, and having him heralded as the most magnanimous human in existence wasn’t helping.

Isaac seemed to accept this apology, because he spun the small pot so Derek could drape the bell onto a branch.

“Where’d you get these?” Derek asked him after a moment, eyeing another of the bells, one that seemed to have broken, because it didn’t tinkle. Holding it in his hands, he was hit with a rush of nostalgia.

“Some of them are my Mom’s. I dug them out of the basement at home. And I bought some at Walmart. I know it’s not classy or whatever, but – cheap,” Isaac answered sheepishly, avoiding his eyes.

Derek took a quiet moment to process the information, delicately looking through the box of ornaments. Isaac hadn’t spoken too much about his Mom before, only explained that she’d died when he was younger. Derek had explained all about what happened to his family, and in return, Isaac shared as much as he was willing.

“They’re nice,” he said finally. He wasn’t sure what else to say. There was a lot he _could_ have said, but like always, it got caught in his throat and didn’t seem to want to come out. He cleared it, looked down at the broken little bell, and forced himself to speak again, even if it half felt as if it was grating his throat to get it out. “Must be nice to have something of hers.” He hadn’t realised how wistful he’d sounded til it was out.

Isaac looked up, his features soft, and nodded, eyeing Derek slowly.

“Yeah. It is. I think Dad probably forgot about them, because he’s destroyed pretty much everything else of hers,” he replied, voice much steadier than Derek’s ever was when he was sharing that kind of information.

“Oh. The fire destroyed most of our stuff,” he said, voice quiet. Isaac must have realised how important the words were, because he stayed quiet too, watching.

“We used to have huge Christmases, with everyone in one place. Dad cut down a tree, and there were all these tacky, awful decorations everywhere. I think it all burned, though. I haven’t seen them in years. We just go to Mom’s for Christmas now.”

That was probably more than he’d said about _before_ in one go than he ever had before. It felt – good. Surprisingly good, to get it out of him. He felt lighter. And he ached a little bit, too.

“You can come to mine for Christmas,” Isaac offered finally, but his voice shook a little, and after a moment, the act fell away, a laugh bubbling out of his lips. “I mean, no, you can’t, because my Dad hates you, and he might end up killing me this year, so you probably don’t want to be witness to that,” he added, still laughing.

It wasn’t anything to laugh about, and Derek wanted to tell him that, but then he was laughing, too, entirely against his will, the sound infectious.

“We’re fucked up, aren’t we?” he breathed out, the laughter still holding his chest tight and tense. Isaac nodded, his eyes shining with mirth. For a second, they were both gloriously happy. Derek hung the broken bell on the tree while he recovered from his laughing fit, and looked up at Isaac again, sober once more.

“I’ll try,” he said. “But no guarantees. And only if you shut up about Stiles every once in a while,” he added, mouth curling up into a crooked grin.

“ _Fine_ ,” Isaac huffed with a put upon sigh, but he was grinning too. “Come on, I want to make gingerbread. And I can’t work out how. Google didn’t help,” he added, hauling himself up and away from the tree, leaving Derek to follow with a shake of his head.

* * *

The Jeep had taken far too long to get fixed, purely because it was Stiles’ responsibility, and he had to wait to have the money to actually do it. And saving up a good few hundred dollars had involved eating bread and butter for a week or so, and begging his father for a loan, which damaged his pride more than anything.

But finally, the day had come, joy of joys, o glorious morning, and Stiles had walked the entire way, in the snow, to go pick it up, the money safely tucked away in his account. It sucked not having his baby, even if Derek had been ferrying him around. The Jeep had been his very first car, and he’d saved for months to buy her.

So it was hard being without her, even without the logistic side of it. He’d spilled all kinds of mess in there; there were sauce stains, milkshakes stains, and a few more that were slightly more embarrassing he didn’t like to tell people about. But they were _his_ stains, and he missed them.

He also looked seriously out of place in the garage, and he recognised that straight away. He was way too clean cut to fit in, even in his jeans and flannelette. The Batman shirt probably didn’t help. Scott had told him in the past that the superhero shirts made him look a lot younger than he actually was, but Stiles refused to eschew them.

The only other man in the whole place that looked a little like him was the receptionist, with a white shirt rolled up to his sleeves and clean hands.

“Hey. I had my Jeep in, and she’s all fixed up,” Stiles said happily, greeting the man with a grin. “Pretty sure I can take her home now, right?”

The man looked him up and down once or twice, blatant, and Stiles had to bite back the snap on the tip of his tongue about _yes_ , he was old enough to be driving.

“Stilinski, Stiles?” he asked, and by now, Stiles was well used to the incredulous looks he got when he put that on forms. Everyone thought he was using some made up pseudonym to avoid real ID or something. More than once, he’d been accused of being a conspiracy theorist. “Yeah, go ahead. You really fucked that car up,” he added, dropping the keys into Stiles’ hand.

A pang of guilt, probably ridiculous, because it wasn’t totally his fault, and it was a _car_ (more than a car, he told himself, way more), but it got brushed aside when he pulled his card out and the man shook his head, refusing to take it.

“Been paid for,” he said, tapping at the keyboard, barely looking at Stiles.

“What? But I haven’t paid. I didn’t even have the money, man, what the hell?” he argued, brow furrowing. He probably shouldn’t have been arguing, because hello, free repairs, but here he was, arguing.

“Some guy came in and paid it,” the man said, looking up, seemingly interested by this little piece of information, rather than Stiles himself. “Handsome guy. Looked well off. You’re lucky.”

Handsome guy. Wealthy handsome guy. Who the hell did he know who was wealthy and handsome, and apparently willing to pay for mechanic repairs? Scott was handsome, but he was hardly wealthy, and even if it might have been something he’d do for a Christmas present, he didn’t have the money, neither of them did. They’d agreed that any spare money they had would go to fixing their shitty heating.

Isaac? No, definitely not. That guy scrounged every cent he had, that was clear from the whole multiple jobs thing. No one at work liked him near enough to do something like this. No one at work really liked him much at all.

A sudden thought crossed his mind, and consequently a cold trickle coursed down his spine. Peter was wealthy. And handsome, in an unnerving sort of way. He could easily have done this. Stiles didn’t know exactly why he _would_ , though. Maybe as some sort of weird way to gain his trust. Rich people did bizarre shit, he knew.

“You gonna take the car, or are you just gonna stand there?” the man asked, impatient, startling him out of his reverie. A little embarrassed, his cheeks tinged pink, and he realised he’d been stood staring into space, trying to work out the mystery.

“Yeah, yeah. Right. Sorry. Thanks, man,” he said distractedly, wandering out to the yard where his Jeep sat faithfully waiting for him. Any uneasy wondering left him the moment he took in the old faded blue of the vehicle, and he grinned, pleased again, opening the door and hauling himself up into the driver’s seat.

It had been cleaned out, which was probably good, the take out bags were getting kind of plentiful, and much to his delight, the cassette was still in the tape deck. His Dad had offered to buy him a proper CD player to stick in it for his birthday one year, but he’d grown attached to the old-fashioned deck. That, and he had about a hundred cassettes piled up in boxes at home, all mixed up jumbles of stuff he’d liked as a kid.

Turning over the engine, which thankfully, started the first go, and ran a lot smoother than she had before she got all fucked up, Stiles headed home, a lot happier to be back in the car. It might be dumb, yeah, he knew it, but the Jeep was more like home than anything or anywhere.

There still remained the mystery, however, of who the _hell_ had paid for it? It couldn’t have been Talia or the office, they were broke enough as it was, and he doubted very much they’d had a change of heart about compensating him. Plus, handsome wealthy dude.

When he was two corners away from his apartment, it dawned on him.

Derek was wealthy. Everyone knew the Hales rolled in it, and Peter wasn’t the only Hale Stiles knew now. Yeah, it still could have been a gesture on the older man’s part, but Derek was handsome, too. They were all fucking beautiful in that family, he thought rather petulantly, not for the first time.

Why would Derek do it, though? Yes, they spoke, and yeah, the guy had been nice enough to act as a carpool for him. And he was asking Stiles for help this week, but that was probably as a last resort, because he knew Stiles wouldn’t say no. He wouldn’t exactly say they were _friends_ yet, and only friends did this kind of stuff.

It was still freezing outside when he had the Jeep safely parked in the garage beside Scott’s bike – and to be honest, half their rent probably paid for that garage, because the apartment sure as hell wasn’t worth the weekly stipend they forked over – and he rushed inside, peeling his gloves off and blowing on his fingers to warm them up some.

Slumping onto his bed, admittedly warm and soft and fantastically hard to get out of every morning, he yanked his phone out of his jean pockets and lay back, flicking on the small TV in the corner and resuming the marathon of the food network he’d abandoned to rescue the Jeep.

[ _Stiles Stilinski, 11.35am]_

_So I went to pick up the Jeep this morning. Thanks very much, Alfred, but your chauffeur services are no longer needed. (That was a Batman reference, in case you didn’t get it. You’re a butler. Alfred. He’s the butler.)_

He left the phone sitting in his lap, drawn in by the frankly mouth-watering Victorian sponge the woman on screen was making (really, Cake Month was fucking torturous for broke as hell public servants), and had almost entirely forgotten he’d even sent Derek a text until the phone buzzed, making him jump.

_[Derek Hale, 12.06pm]_

_I’ve read Batman. Did it go OK?_

Well. Not the friendliest of texts, but considering Stiles was possibly the most long-winded and cheeriest texter he knew, his standards were pretty high. He tore his eyes from the screen, his stomach rumbling, and thumbed out a reply, pulling the duvet up over his knees.

_[Stiles Stilinski, 12.10pm]_

_Dude, you’re a bat fan? Awesome!!! Can’t really picture you reading comics. :P Yeah, she’s ship shape again. Funny thing, though – someone paid for it before I could! You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you? /\: (That’s supposed to be waggling eyebrows. I don’t think it worked)._

The screen was now showing him how to make steamed pork dumplings, and he muttered quietly to himself about the unfairness of having to watch delicious food being prepared, and he couldn’t eat any of it. He didn’t change the channel, though.

_[Derek Hale, 12.18pm]_

_It didn’t work. The comics were Laura’s. I read them on occasion. I paid for the Jeep._

Stiles’ jaw dropped. He’d _suspected_ , yeah, but come on, he hadn’t actually thought Derek would really have done it. Losing complete (temporary) interest in the screen, he typed out his reply so quickly that it looked like gibberish, and he had to go back and fix it all.

_[Stiles Stilinski, 12.32pm]_

_:O You paid for the Jeep??? Why would you do that? I mean, I’m so not complaining, but man! That was a lotta money!_

There was a long delay before Derek’s next text, and Stiles began to think that maybe he’d somehow offended the guy. He hadn’t said thank you, in his shock, which he was so going to have to do. He thought about sending another, to tack it on, but he didn’t wanna bother Derek if he really was ignoring Stiles. He forced his twitching fingers to leave the phone alone, immersing his splintered attention in learning how to make some truly disgusting looking stuffed lobsters.

_[Derek Hale, 1.00pm]_

_I wanted to thank you for helping Isaac._

Short. But he didn’t sound angry, or anything. In fact, that was kind of – _sweet._ What the hell. Derek had asked for his help, and he’d tried to give it as best he could. That didn’t mean Derek had to go doing stuff like this.

_[Stiles Stilinski, 1.05pm]_

_You didn’t have to do that, Derek, seriously, I didn’t do that much, I just picked him up. But thank you! Thanks so much, that’s so awesome._

OK, so at least Derek didn’t appear to be angry or offended. That was the main thing, because wow. Wow, that really had been a whole lot of money, he’d blanched when they’d given him the quote. He didn’t want to look ungrateful. But he was kind of astonished, nonetheless. Derek was grumpy and surly and didn’t seem to talk to anyone but him and Isaac, and he did something as nice as _this_ for him? For _him_?

_[Derek Hale, 1.15pm]_

_You did a lot more than just pick him up. You made him see sense. And you got him to talk to me again. I’m grateful. It wasn’t a big deal, they only had to replace part of the engine._

Stiles snorted. Yeah, a huge part. Basically, the whole engine, from what they’d told him, and for what he was going to be paying, he’d want it to be the whole engine, too.

_[Stiles Stilinski, 1.19pm]_

_Don’t even, dude, it was a huge deal to me, thank you. Are we still gonna go play broomsticks and cauldrons? I’m still down for that._

To be honest, he was kind of super looking forward to it. Not only because now he really wanted to help Derek out with something substantial, to help make up for the Jeep, but because it had been a good long while since he’d even hung out in a coven. He was just gonna ignore the fact that this one might be a little corrupt.

His magic could probably do with being around a few other magic-users too. He was probably due for a chat, too, about how to level up. Work had been sucking up too much of his life lately, and he was practically buzzing with the now replenished magical energy he’d carefully worked for.

_[Derek Hale, 1.35pm]_

_Tonight, then. I’ll pick you up 7. And this is work, not play._

There was the grumpy Derek he’d got to know so well. Stiles counted himself lucky that he’d caught even a glimpse of a friendlier Derek. Tonight. He could do tonight. He didn’t have anything else on, and even if they were only investigating, it would be _like_ a fun night out. Maybe.

_[Stiles Stilinski, 1.36pm]_

_It’s a date._

For once, he got an almost instantaneous reply.

_[Derek Hale, 1.37pm]_

_No, it’s not._


	10. Chapter 10

Stiles didn’t much care that Derek seemed to be back to giving him short, brusque answers, he’d done something truly fantastic for him, and tonight, they were going to out to work together. If that wasn’t the beginning of a friendship, he didn’t know what the hell was.

He spent the rest of the afternoon sitting pleased in his bed, before all the food on screen became too much for him, and he pulled on his thickest socks, his college sweatshirt, and padded out to the kitchen to bang together whatever he could out of the ingredients in their pretty bare cupboard. It wasn’t as bad as it could have been, certainly better than some weeks, but he still only managed a rather thin soup and great hunks of stale, crusty bread, lathered in butter. It wasn’t bad.

He’d get paid again next week, and then they could buy some more real food. It was that thought that triggered, with a bit of a jolt, the realisation that the meeting he’d half forgotten about, having done all the research he possibly could, was only a few days away.

He burned the roof of his mouth, choking on the large spoonful of soup he’d been about to swallow. He’d almost completely forgotten that that was his job now, that he wasn’t paid for lounging around the office and helping a few reluctant people with their paperwork. He’d better look back over the notebook he’d compiled on the guy. At least he could remember the name. Ramirez. That was enough for now.

He had more exciting work to be doing now, anyway. Work that didn’t just involve sweet-talking people, much as he might like to try out his manipulation skills. The real work, the stuff he loved, that was magic and fighting, and _helping_. He felt far more like he was helping people when he was actually doing some damage to enemies, when he could feel his heart in his throat and Scott was by his side, watching each other’s backs.

He still, privately, didn’t understand why Talia had never agreed with him on that. She seemed to think he wasn’t up to the job, not like the wolves were. And yeah, OK, he got that. He was human, he didn’t have magic bones that knitted back together after a clean snap, but he could hold his own, and he _thought_ he’d proved that. He’d passed the same entry exam as Scott, for fuck’s sake. But despite the bitterness he nursed, and the very quiet, private resentment, he cherished the job, and he knew he’d never do better anywhere else. No one else could let him help out the supernatural community, not really.

He had to admit, though, on occasion, he’d thought about leaving and trying his hand at something else. One of the few friends he’d made in college, and had stuck, had been interested in all sorts of rogue and dangerous creatures. Stiles figured that the reason they got on so well, was because he was too. And an (un)healthy interest in the supernatural had united them. The guy now, he was working as a freelancer, all over the country, helping and training feral wolves back into packs. It was one of the more dangerous things he could be doing, and for that reason, Stiles was a little jealous.

But as he dressed for the gathering tonight, he thought his job wasn’t so bad. He was with Scott. That was the most important, watching out for him, like he’d promised Mrs. McCall he would. And he _did_ get a chance to do some fun stuff every once in a while. Like this. This could be fun. He was looking forward to seeing some witches again, being in a community where he really and truly fit in. And, his mind supplied, in a rather oily voice, he’d be pleased to see Derek again. If only to say thank you in person.

Derek had said 7, and by the time ten to seven rolled around, Stiles was dressed and ready. He’d already learned that Derek hated lateness, especially his. He was bettering himself, see? Working on his old flaws.

He stood, cold, his breath visible in a white puff against the air, on his doorstep, waiting for the Camaro to glide into the street, and wasn’t surprised when it did just that, at exactly 7 o clock. He was tempted to tease, suspecting that Derek had been waiting around the corner for the clock to strike exactly seven before he showed up, but his jokes never went down so well.

“Evening!” he greeted, opening the car door and sliding in, grinning at Derek from the passenger seat. Derek, for once, looked a little more like a normal, casual person, not dressed in his black work slacks and crisp white shirt. Instead, he’d donned jeans, and thick, long-sleeved blue sweater. Around his neck was a scarf. Stiles couldn’t help himself.

“D’you borrow that from Isaac, then?” he teased, cheeks pink from a mixture of the cold, and his own giddy delight. Derek’s eyes flicked down to the scarf, where Stiles’ had fallen, and his mouth twitched up, very slightly, into a tiny smirk.

“He has a hundred, he won’t notice one went missing,” he countered, voice dry as they sped off, the rev of the engine for once lost on an astonished Stiles. He gaped at Derek for a second, before snapping his jaws shut.

“Who knew, Derek Hale can make jokes,” he replied faintly, but the grin that wouldn’t subside was more of an indication of how pleased he was than anything. Maybe someone had put something in Derek’s drink, to make him a bit more cheerful. Stiles could have thought of a few choice things himself, but he was above spiking drinks. Mostly.

“You make more than enough for the rest of us, I’ve never felt the need before,” Derek answered, not looking over at him. This was definitely a miracle of some sort. Stiles couldn’t even name the last time Derek had been this seemingly friendly in the whole time he’d worked in the office. Then again, he _had_ avoided the man for a good chunk of that time.

“Well, everyone’s so sombre and serious at work, I thought the place needed some cheering up,” he defended. Which was true. Even if, admittedly, he kind of knew that sombre and serious was what they were supposed to be. He knew the importance of their job, he just didn’t see why they couldn’t _enjoy_ it, too. And though the other agents seemed to resent him, mostly, he thought a few were glad for his raucousness sometimes. Maybe.

“Your jokes are only funny when they’re not stupid and endangering other people,” Derek pointed out, and he didn’t sound nearly so light anymore. Stiles slumped down in his seat and bit back the urge to snap. That wasn’t going to help anyone.

“Yes, I know,” he answered, with only very little bite. “I do stupid stuff that’s dangerous and everyone thinks I don’t belong in there, I get it. I just can’t turn off who I am.”

Derek said nothing, staying quiet as he drove them across town. Huh. That was as much confirmation as he’d ever need that he’d been completely right in thinking the wolves didn’t think too much of him. While he’d known it all along, it wasn’t particularly _nice_ knowledge.

“So, we got a plan for tonight?” he continued when the car stayed perfectly silent, trying to keep his voice happy and upbeat. No use crying over shit he couldn’t change. “Cover stories? Excuses for being there? Because let me tell you, it’s super bad manners to bring just anyone along without a good reason, let alone a werewolf.”

Derek glanced over at him again, seemingly relieved to have moved past their little uncomfortable moment, and Stiles was shocked to see interest on his face.

“Is it?” he asked, surprise colouring his tone. “I didn’t know that. I thought just anyone could turn up, you know, if they knew what it really was.”

“Well, yeah, for witches. Any witch can show up to a coven meet, as long as they’re respectful and have good intentions, blah blah. It’s kinda like AA meetings. If you need one, they’re on every corner, and you’re always welcome,” Stiles explained with a bit of a grin.

Derek snorted with what appeared to be amusement, and half-smiled.

“My name’s Derek, and I’ve been spell-free for thirty seven months,” he intoned, voice flat and serious. It was only the half smile still playing at his lips that gave him away.

Barking out a short puff of laughter, Stiles decided that trying to work out why Derek was so happy was a battle he’d rather not undertake, and that enjoying it would be the better option.

“Hello, Derek,” he chanted back at him. “Although, you know, we kind of encourage spells here. Maybe you meant to go to NA,” he added. “Necromancy Anonymous.”

Derek didn’t laugh this time.

“Necromancers are dangerous,” he said after a moment. No duh. Stiles felt the words on the tip of his tongue, but swallowed them. Derek didn’t appear to waste words on stupid, obvious declarations like some people did (him, included), so a captain obvious remark seemed cruel, and unnecessary.

“Yeah, man, they are,” he answered instead. There had to be a reason for what he’d said. “Like, super dangerous. Even the darker light-casters don’t dabble in their shit.” It was somewhat refreshing to be able to discuss magic with someone. Scott didn’t trust it, not really, and Deaton, the only other caster he knew, was old and disapproving, and never contributed much to conversation anyway.

“Dark light-casters?” Derek replied sceptically. He still sounded interested. Maybe he didn’t get to discuss it with anyone, either. The revelation that he could do magic too still left Stiles’ head spinning. He would never have pegged Derek for a caster.

“Yes,” Stiles answered, voice firm. “Not everyone’s just light or dark, there’s shades. And you know, you kind of have to identify with one side or another, but it doesn’t mean you’re totally good or bad. There’s lots of people who can do dark magic, but they don’t hurt anyone with it. And a whole _bunch_ of people who use light stuff for bad purposes.”

Derek seemed to be contemplating that for a good while, and Stiles let him do so in silence, until they finally came to a stop in front of a small public library.

“Here?” he asked, eyeing the place curiously. Derek nodded.

“There’s a meeting room they hire, and they’re left well enough alone. Besides, they just look like Wiccans if anyone gets nosy,” he answered. Stiles wondered where it was that he’d got this information, because technically, covens were an underground, illegal thing, and he doubted Derek did much corrupt double agent work.

“You’re a genuine witch, they should welcome you,” the wolf continued, shutting off the engine and looking to Stiles. “That’s no problem. Just pretend like you’ve come for a normal meeting. Me, though,” he paused at that, the thought clear in his features.

“I can say you’re interested in learning magic,” Stiles interjected. “That you’re my friend, and I dragged you along. If you’re with me, they wouldn’t attack you, even if you are a wolf.”

Derek stiffened, looked rather affronted that Stiles thought he needed protecting, or that’s what Stiles assumed he looked so upset about, and then apparently thought better of it, because he deflated and nodded.

“Tell them I’m a disbeliever. It’ll be more believable, if I seem like some kind of magic-hater. Won’t make me popular, but I don’t want to be,” he shrugged. Stiles wondered whether or not Derek had ever wanted to be popular.

“OK! Yeah, I can do that. No worries, that’ll be OK, you’re plenty grumpy enough for that,” he said breezily, ignoring the scowl that appeared on Derek’s face.

“Just don’t call me Hale,” he warned. “We’re well known. That really would get me thrown out, or attacked.”

Nodding, Stiles went over it all in his head, resolved not to ask any more questions, before an important one popped into his head.

“What _are_ we investigating here?” he asked, cocking his head to one side, curious. Derek had just said work, not much more than that.

“There’s been a lot of activity. Magic, everywhere, all over DC. It seems – I don’t know. Doesn’t seem right, after that bunch you faced last month. I don’t trust it. I want to find out if there’s any kind of coordinated movement going on in the community,” Derek explained, sounding very much like a more patient, soft spoken Talia.

“Well, I can ask around, you know. I’ll be _subtle_ ,” he added hurriedly, when Derek opened his mouth, no doubt to tell him not to just outright _ask_. He was smarter than that.

“OK. Ask some questions, but just make sure you don’t seem suspicious,” Derek finally settled on, after a moment of some pretty strong hesitation.

“Derek, man, when have I _ever_ not been a master sleuth?” Stiles asked easily, shooting the older man a grin before he hopped right out of the car, standing on the sidewalk in the blustery cold once more. To be fair, Derek hadn’t known him that long, and he wasn’t always a total ninja about these thing, but that didn’t matter.

“Just make sure you are tonight,” Derek said, stepping out of the car himself. He looked as unfazed by the cold as ever.

“Yeah, yeah,” Stiles grumbled, waiting for Derek to join his side before he headed into the small, warmly lit library. He felt right at home immediately. He’d always loved libraries of any kind, even if they were little and poky like this one. Books meant knowledge, and knowledge meant strength where he had none anywhere else. He’d always loved knowledge.

Derek looked just as at home, surprisingly enough, looking over the shelves as if he very much wanted to pull a few books off and sink into them.

“You read?” Stiles asked, hovering just past the doorway, ignoring the inquiring look from the young woman amongst the shelves.

“Yes, I can read,” Derek answered tartly, and before Stiles could jab back at him for being purposefully dense, he’d strode past the shelves to a grey, nondescript door toward the back of the building.

Stiles followed him through the door, and found himself standing in a large, airy room that should have been quite cold. It was bigger than the whole poky library, and he thought the librarians probably resented it. He would, anyway. The room _wasn’t_ cold, though, it was pleasantly warm, despite the thin plaster. He put that down to the amount of magic in the room – he would have tried to heat it up himself if it wasn’t already.

They didn’t seem to have been noticed. While not full to bursting, there were a fair amount of people gathered in the middle, sitting in a circle on little metal fold out chairs. Stiles smirked, thinking of the AA crack, but said nothing. There were maybe twenty people all seated, and that was definitely more than usually showed up, at least to the coven Stiles usually graced with his presence.

“Welcome,” called out a light, wispy sort of voice, and both his and Derek’s heads snapped to attention. The voice belonged to a young girl, who looked, every inch of her, like she’d watched a lot of bad films about Wiccans and tried to replicate the image.

“For god’s sake, Nancy, just say hello like a normal person,” said another voice, this one firm, irritable, and perfectly every day. The young girl, Nancy, bristled, and tossed her hair over one shoulder.

“I’ve told you that’s not my _chosen_ name,” she snapped, sounding far less ethereal than Stiles suspected she hoped to. “I’d appreciate if you called me _Lucrezia_.”

The words were met with derisive snorts, not only from the irritable sounding woman, but from several people, all around the circle. Stiles shot a look at Derek, who looked like he wanted very dearly to turn right around and leave.

“Hello, hello, come in, don’t just linger in the doorway there,” the grumpier voice told them, and the woman who belonged to it stood. Stiles was pleasantly surprised to see who it was.

“Elinor!” he said happily. She eyed him for a moment, narrowed her eyes, and then beamed, her worn face lighting up.

“Brat! Why didn’t you say it was you, honestly, loitering in the shadows like some sort of villain?” she scolded, and Stiles stepped forward properly into the light, leaving Derek to follow along behind him, wordlessly.

“Aren’t you supposed to, you know, have some manners, and wait for an invitation?” he countered, cheeky, his face glowing pink like it never did at home. The woman, older and stocky and decidedly intimidating when she was coming right at you, came, well, right at him, and cuffed him over the back of the head.

“Don’t mouth off to me, you, not when no one’s seen you in months,” she warned. Stiles gave her a warm hug, which seemed to appease her, but not for long.

“I’ve been busy, working! I don’t have time to come to a meeting every week,” he protested, which she cut off quickly enough.

“Fuck work, you make time for your craft, you hear me?” she growled. Stiles didn’t have a chance to answer, because Derek had made a strange noise from behind him, and when he turned to see what it was, he could see the man’s cheeks had gone pink, too, and he looked as if he was trying to smother laughter.

“Elinor, we’d like to get _started_ ,” called out a man, pointedly, his voice deeper and smoother than anything Stiles had heard before.

“Oh, wait one second, David, will you, I want to say a proper hello,” Elinor snapped, her voice like steel, and though David gave her a withering look, he quietened, and sat waiting. Not everyone waited, though, because as Stiles was in the middle of giving another excuse, a loud, clear voice, belonging to a truly beautiful woman, rang out across the room, sharp and apprehensive.

“You, boy. What have you brought with you, there? Is that a _wolf_?”

Stiles puffed up immediately, not only because – ‘ _boy’,_ he despised being addressed like that, but because whoever had asked, had called Derek a what, not a who. But as for attacking, he didn’t have a chance, because Derek had stepped forward, laid a large hand on his shoulder, and shielded him with his body.

“Yeah. That’d be me. The wolf. And the _boy_? His name is Stiles,” he spat, his eyes flashing blue. Most everyone in the room sucked in a breath, and Stiles could _feel_ the hostility rise. He might have been imagining it, but he thought he caught a glimpse of a few white hot little sparks from the circle, too.

“Derek,” he muttered, fully aware that most of them could probably hear him. “Dude, maybe don’t shift here. Let me handle it.”

Derek looked mutinous, but he took his hand off Stiles, flashed his eyes back to normal, and stood back, glaring. Either he really wanted to make this whole magic-sceptic act thing work, or he was more pissed off than Stiles.

“Hi, everyone,” he called out to the room, though his voice wasn’t exactly friendly yet. “I’m Stiles. I’m a caster. This is Derek. He’s a werewolf. And he’s not going to make trouble or hurt anyone, and if anyone has a problem with him, they can be the ones to leave, it won’t be us,” he added, voice growing harder and colder with each word. By the end of it, the beautiful woman who’d called out looked furious, but she didn’t get out of her seat. No one did.

“Good,” Elinor said brusquely, turning on her heel and heading back to her own seat, dragging two across the carpet for Stiles and Derek to sit in, by her side. “Now that’s out of the way, let’s get on with it, shall we?”

If anyone felt the need to point out she’d been keeping them waiting, they didn’t indulge it. Stiles took the seat beside the old woman, and Derek took the seat beside him, ignoring the looks he was being given.

“Right, well, since we’ve got some new faces, I think we should introduce ourselves again, tell each other why we’re here,” Elinor said purposefully. “I’ll go first,” she added, unnecessarily. No one would have interrupted.

“My name is Elinor, I learned magic from my Nonna, to keep the family safe from harm. And I experiment. I like explosions,” she pressed on, with a grin. Stiles watched the introductions progress all the other way around the circle, so that he’d be last. The young girl who looked as if she was trying too hard, Lucrezia, told them all she was attracted to the natural magic of the earth, and though most rolled their eyes, she took no heed, and waited, pretty respectfully, actually, Stiles thought, for them to stop tittering.

The beautiful, cold woman introduced herself as Mariana, glared the whole way through her spiel at Derek, and told them in no uncertain terms that she’d learned magic to defend herself from other dangerous creatures. Stiles bristled. Derek’s shoulders stiffened, but he said nothing until it finally came to his turn.

“My name’s Derek. Don’t really want to be here. Don’t think magic’s really anything much at all. Lot of smoke and mirrors, if you ask me,” he told them. He sounded astoundingly grumpy, and Stiles had to thank the years of being a grouchy recluse. The act was perfection. He scowled, tending to his _own_ act, and nudged Derek with his elbow, chiding.

“Don’t pay him any attention. He’s a dick, I’m trying to prove him wrong,” he huffed. It was definitely fun playing along as if this was normal. “I’m Stiles. My Mom taught me, and I love it. Just love it, I love the theory and the history, and I love making it work for me,” he added, telling, for once, a whole and untarnished truth. He did adore it.

“Yes, we can see that, you’re starting to glow,” said a man across from him, who Stiles remembered had introduced himself as a lobbyist with a passion for numbers. He wondered whether the causes near and dear to his heart benefited from a little magic. Forget campaign donations, they should investigate magical political tampering. Actually, that wasn’t a bad idea. He should suggest it to Talia.

He looked down, and he was indeed starting to glow. Blushing, he willed it to die off.

“See, this is what happens when you don’t come to see us, your magic gets all bottled up and you lose control,” Elinor scolded, but the man shook his head, smiling.

“He’s just passionate, Ellie, leave the boy alone,” he argued, and astonishingly, she did. For the next half hour, they began to discuss their latest projects, what they’d all been doing, and how they’d been keeping their magic sharp. It was almost like a social group, Stiles thought, and he couldn’t be more grateful for it. Even if he didn’t know most of them, it was so _nice_ to be around like-minded people again. He really had left it far too long again to come see a coven.

He couldn’t join in as much as he’d like, he had to keep his job confidential, or they’d toss him out right now, and that was if he was _lucky_ , but it was great listening to other people, getting ideas from them, his magical juices beginning to flow.

“This is a really good turn out,” Stiles said after a while, his face pink again, delighted. “When I’ve been before, it’s, like, five people _maybe_.”

Elinor snorted, and looked very much like she was going to hex him.

“You only go once in a blue moon, Stiles, it’s people like you who make the attendance so thin,” she retorted, but the words were only playfully biting, and Stiles could tell the difference between when the old woman was truly pissed with him, and when she was just keeping him on his toes. And when she was truly pissed, she swore a lot.

“There’s not usually this many people?” Derek asked quietly from beside him, and Stiles’ head turned quickly. He’d been enjoying himself so much he’d almost forgotten he was sitting there.

“No, this is unusually crowded,” Mariana answered for him, tone as frosty as her expression. “We much prefer when we don’t have unwanted visitors.”

“Mind your manners,” David warned sharply, and though he may have looked like the furthest thing from a threat to Stiles, Mariana gave him a pointed, angry glance, but fell quiet again. He would have given his right hand betting that the perfectly average looking businessman packed a hell of a magical punch.

“It’s OK. I’m used to ignorant people’s prejudice,” Derek said, his voice just as, if not more, cold as Mariana’s had been. Stiles shot him a warning look, one that had nothing to do with the act, and met Derek’s eyes. He looked angry.

“Don’t be rude, Derek,” he warned, and maybe that was a little part of the act. Mostly, though, he didn’t want Derek pissing off a bunch of casters who already it out for him. Werewolves might be thick-skinned, but there was a whole bunch of magic that could hurt them, really bad. Stiles knew all about it.

Derek glared at him, but when Stiles turned back to the now slightly awkward conversation, he could feel the man inch his chair the very slightest bit closer to him. Good. He was happy to protect him for a little while.

“So, uh,” he started again, addressing the room, trying to ignore the fact that they were now watching him curiously, almost all of them. “Is there some kind of solstice or something going on I’ve forgotten about. I really haven’t seen this many people together in – forever.”

“Oh, yes, there’s the Winter Solstice, for Christmas, of course – “ Lucrezia answered, her eyes lighting up, but Elinor cut her off.

“Not what he means,” she said sharply, and Lucrezia’s face crumpled, sinking in on herself. For all her airy, seemingly fraudulent nonsense, Stiles felt sorry for her. “There’s been talk about magical cooperation,” she told Stiles, mouth twisting into a bit of a scowl. “You know, the old attempts to unite the community and gather strength. It’ll fall apart just like every other time some ‘mastermind’ has tried it. We’re all too vain and too self-absorbed to share power amongst each other.”

Quite a few of those sitting amongst them gave her reproachful glances, but Stiles was more interested in the way Derek had stiffened beside him.

“Magical cooperation meaning between _humans_ ,” Mariana shot out quickly. She’d clearly noticed it too. He snorted, shook his head, and bit his tongue to keep from snarling at her. As Derek stayed quiet, he thought he must have been doing the same.

“You’ve been misinformed, girly, the movement wants magic of any kind, don’t be so silly,” said a portly looking woman from their left. She’d stayed relatively quiet the whole evening, and Stiles hadn’t paid her much attention until now. She looked like what he imagined the quintessential homemaker would look like. Plump and healthy, clean and pressed, with a relatively kindly face. He could imagine her giving them pie off a windowsill. And with that thought, he actually smelt the sharp tang of apple pie, and realised there was magic in the air. That was a charm she had in place. She wanted to look unthreatening.

“Any magic? You mean magic used by non-humans?” Derek asked, before Stiles could even open his mouth to question her. He shot the man a quick glance out of the corner of his eye. Derek was supposed to be acting as if he thought magic was nonsense. He nudged him gently in the hope it would remind him.

“Yes, any magic,” answered the woman, turning her eyes to Derek. They watched him keenly. “There are plenty of supernatural beings that can perform magic humans could never get a handle on. The way your kind transforms, for example,” she explained, and if Stiles didn’t want to not blow their cover, he would have taken Derek by the arm and dragged him right out of there, that second. He didn’t like the way this woman was looking at Derek. Like he was a particularly intriguing ant.

“That magic isn’t applicable to humans, though,” Derek countered, and that was it, that was fishy, Derek said he didn’t believe in this right at the start. The others watched the exchange quietly, and if they saw Stiles’ panic, they said nothing.

“Well, not currently, but there are some who believe if we simply understood how the magic worked, we could tweak and play with it. It would be marvellous to share that kind of knowledge between species, don’t you think?” the woman asked, her attention purely on Derek, their eyes locked.

“I suppose,” Derek answered after a good, long silence, and Stiles damn near sighed in relief. “But I don’t think my kind of magic compares to the tricks you humans try.” The act was back, and the scowl back on almost everyone’s face.

“Ooookay, I think that’s our cue to leave,” Stiles said hurriedly, standing so quickly that his chair kicked out from behind him. “Lovely to meet everyone, but we should go before my _badly-mannered_ friend offends everyone.”

There were a few murmurs of farewell, not very enthusiastic ones, but Elinor stood and kissed him once on the cheek, following it up with another light smack to the back of his head.

“Don’t you leave it so long next time,” she warned him. “And feel free to bring your friend back,” she added over his shoulder, to Derek. “When he’s acquired an appreciation for it.”

Pulling back, Stiles found Derek had already stood, had his hands shoved into his pockets, and looked eager to leave. Giving them a final wave, Stiles turned on his heel and hurried back out of the room, back out into the small library. The change in atmosphere was immediate.

They both breathed out, relieved, and Derek immediately strode toward a shelf in the corner, pulling out a book and running his fingers over the cover.

“Uh. What’re you doing?” Stiles asked, eyeing him strangely. Derek looked down at the novel for a moment, then up at Stiles. His eyes weren’t hard like usual. They looked troubled.

“That’s a bad scene,” he said quietly, casting a small glance over his shoulder at the door as if they could still hear him. And actually, it was probably a better idea to discuss this elsewhere. Derek seemed to think the same, because he replaced the novel – Stiles caught a quick glance at the title and was surprised to see it was a much worn, tired _Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them –_ and led them right out the door into the cold again.

Stiles followed at his heels, shivering for a moment before he closed his eyes, willed a warmth to spark in his very core, and reached one hand out without thinking to clasp Derek’s, sharing the warmth. The man looked down in surprise, his eyes wide, and when his fingers didn’t curl back around Stiles’ palm, he took his hand back, embarrassed.

“Sorry. Thought you might be cold, and I can make – heat,” he muttered, ducking his eyes and heading straight to the Camaro before he made a bigger dick of himself. He slid into the passenger seat before Derek could say anything, if he even had anything to say about Stiles spontaneously holding his hand, and waited in forced ignorance for the man to join him.

If Derek was offended by it, he didn’t say anything, starting the car up and pulling out away and fast, as if he couldn’t wait to be out of there. To be honest, the guy had looked really freaked out. Maybe the hand holding was nothing in the face of being really fucking disturbed by that last experience.

“So. You OK, dude?” he asked after a long moment, when they were far enough away that really and truly no one could have followed or heard them. Paranoia paid off sometimes. Derek nodded, once, stiff, but didn’t answer with actual words. Stiles, for once, kept his words to himself, and waited for Derek to provide some of his own.

“I’ve never been to one of those,” the wolf added eventually. His voice was quiet, but steady. Stiles suspected that if he had a glance at his eyes again, they’d be a little less troubled. “And – I knew something was going on.”

Stiles felt a little prickle of loyalty, wanting to defend his community, with usually, people that he loved, doing things that they all loved, but he had to agree this time. That had been seriously unnerving.

“Yeah, that one was a little weird. That woman, man, I swear she was looking at you like she wanted to _eat_ you,” he replied, putting on a mostly affected shudder. The spell, the disguise, it had been a good one. Stiles was lucky he could pick up on the falsity of the scent. He wondered whether Derek had, too, with his wolfy nose.

“Study me,” Derek corrected darkly. “She wanted to dissect me. Work out my magic and use it for herself.”

“I kind of got that impression, yeah,” Stiles admitted, rubbing a hand over the nape of his neck. There had been something definitely not good about that line of questioning. And what was worse, Stiles kind of understood it. “She seemed … really dangerous, man. That whole magical cooperation knowledge thing? If I didn’t know that sounded sketchy, I would have been into that. I mean. Sharing knowledge, that sounds so cool.”

Derek shot him a quick, alarmed glance, and he hurried to fix the mistake.

“Not the weirdo dissecting thing!” he amended quickly. “Just, you know, it would be super interesting to understand all the different species and how their magic works and stuff. And if it’s interesting enough to suck me in, then there’s probably a whole ton of people who have been sucked in, too,” he explained.

Derek still looked upset, so Stiles leaned in a little, using a tiny burst of magic to nudge the steering wheel left. The other man looked over at him, alarmed, before shaking his head and taking them wholly left, down a side street lined with restaurants.

“C’mon. We may as well get some dinner after that,” Stiles said lightly. He pulled out his wallet, looked inside, and ignored the way his heart sunk. Ten bucks. That might buy him a bowl of fries. Maybe. He’d just pretend like he wasn’t hungry.

“Yeah. I could eat,” Derek replied, smoothly gliding the car into a parallel park, the likes of which would have taken Stiles several tries. “Italian?”

He was out of the car before Stiles could shove his wallet back in his pocket, the door swinging open, Derek holding it for him. Blinking, Stiles stepped out, still pleasantly warm from the little fire he’d kindled within himself.

“Sure, Italian. Thanks.”

Stiles hadn’t thought Derek would really want to go to dinner with him, but he seemed pretty shaken, so maybe that was affecting his usual anti-social tendencies. He followed the man into a well-lit, warm looking restaurant, and let the waitress flirt and smile at Derek before she seated them.

“So – it helped, right?” he asked, once they’d sat down at a small table smack bang next to the fireplace. “I mean, you got the info you wanted?”

Derek nodded, but he didn’t look too happy about it. Stiles wondered what it was the man had been expecting, but thought asking might make him even unhappier.

“Yes, it helped. At least I know now the vague outline of what’s going on. What the threat is,” he answered, taking a roll from the straw basket on the table between them, smearing it with an obscene amount of butter and tearing his teeth into it roughly. Stiles grinned across at him, before doing the same.

“Know what you’re gonna do about it?” he asked through a mouthful of bread. Maybe if he filled up on the rolls, he’d get away with ordering not much.

“No,” Derek grumbled, wiping away a smear of butter at the corner of his mouth. “No idea. It was a lot worse than I was actually expecting. And … I didn’t really know what I was going to do about it, even if it was just something small,” he admitted, looking a little sheepish.

“Well, we can outline the threat, at least,” Stiles replied reasonably, remembering the official procedure. “So, a whole bunch of witches have been making attempts to form alliances, right? One big massive group of casters, experimenting with magic and getting stronger.” He paused, swallowed what was in his mouth, and considered what he’d just said. “Huh. That sounds really awful,” he added.

“You don’t say,” Derek snapped. His hard features softened a moment later, though, and he rubbed one large hand over his face tiredly, sighing. “Sorry. I just – I’m stressed. This was worse than I wanted it to be. I appreciate you helping me with it, seriously.”

Stiles, though still a little stung from the rebuke, brushed it aside, good natured. He became a nasty bitch when he was tired and stressed out, and Derek definitely looked that.

“Don’t worry about it,” he waved off. “Anyone would be a bit snarky if they had to deal with that. Honestly, I wanted to throw that bitch across the room, talking about you like you were some animal,” he snarled, and without him even meaning to, the chunk of buttered roll in his hand suddenly became warm, and the butter melted right on top of it.

“Shit,” he muttered, but Derek was just watching him with something that looked very much like amusement. “I didn’t mean – oh, shit,” he swore angrily when the butter slid down his wrist, and he had to quickly bring it up to his mouth to lick it away.

“You don’t usually lose control like that?” Derek asked, perfectly calm, watching him struggle to lap at the melted butter. Stiles swore at the roll, but shook his head.

“Nope. My control’s awesome, I just – haven’t used much magic lately, and sometimes it spills over,” he explained, swallowing the last chunk of roll. “Now I’m all _sticky._ ” He cast a quick look around the room, to make sure no one was looking, before mentally instructing the fire beside them to grow momentarily hotter, and evaporate all the stickiness within one or two seconds. Derek watched him curiously, the same expression on his face as had been when he was asking about the coven.

Before he could steer the conversation back to the looming threat, the waiter was hovering over them, waiting for orders.

“Evening,” Derek said, more pleasantly than he ever sounded with people he _knew_. “Could I get the carbonara, please, with a side of garlic bread?” While that sounded fucking amazing to Stiles, he’d already glanced at the menu, and just the garlic bread alone was more than his measly budget allowed.

“Right, yeah, um. I’ll just have … fries. Thanks. Just a bowl,” he ordered, trying to ignore the thinly veiled look of contempt the waiter gave him. He probably thought he was some tourist, unwilling to venture from the McDonalds like diet. Derek, though, looked similarly unimpressed.

“You’re not going to order real food?” he asked incredulously. “Stiles, order some real fucking food, it’s dinner time, you must be hungry.” To be honest, Stiles was kind of starving, since the thin soup hadn’t filled him up all that much.

He shook his head, though, took a glance at the now irritated waiter, and handed the menu back.

“No, I’m fine. Look, I just ate nearly all those rolls,” he argued, though admittedly, somewhat weakly. “Fries are fine, man, seriously,” he added. Unconvincingly, when his stomach rumbled. Traitor.

“Stiles,” Derek said quietly, leaning across the table to him. “You’re the one who wanted to come for dinner. Eat,” he demanded.

“I can’t afford it,” Stiles hissed before he could stop himself, his cheeks flushing when he realised what he’d blurted out. Of course he just had to point out that he didn’t even have enough to buy himself dinner to Derek Hale, who probably had enough money to buy this restaurant.

The man, though, instead of pretending to be unfazed, or looking at him with any kind of pity, handed his menu to the waiter smoothly.

“He’ll have what I’m having,” he said, which the now grumpy man must have taken as a saving grace, and strode off before Stiles could protest.

“Hey!” he snapped at Derek. “I said I can’t afford it.” Embarrassing enough to say for the second time around, but he didn’t need anyone ordering food he couldn’t pay for.

“You’re not having _fries_ for dinner,” Derek snapped back, looking just as fierce. His face, determined, hard and set, looked quite formidable cast in the shadow of the firelight, flickering over it, and Stiles thought better of insulting him. “I can pay,” Derek added when he stayed quiet.

“I don’t – “ but he cut himself off. _Need_ Derek to pay for him, what was he’d been going to say, but yeah, he kind of did need Derek to pay. Didn’t mean he had to like it, though. “Thank you,” he said begrudgingly.

Derek seemed to take this as enough gratitude to satisfy him, and the fierce looked disappeared from his face.

“You’re welcome,” he replied, and now that he was normal again, Stiles could see how very tired he looked.

“So, um. What was that deal with the book? Earlier,” Stiles asked hesitantly, trying to navigate past the awkwardness of the moment. Probably by steering right into another awkward moment, but that was just his style.

Derek shot him a wry grin, and it lit up his whole face in a way Stiles had never seen it do before. He seemed much younger, much happier, than Stiles had ever seen him before.

“It was my favourite when I was little,” he explained. “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. It was like our own private little joke. I’d always flick to the werewolf page. Knew it off by heart for years. Most of it was right, and I liked to think if we were real, maybe the whole thing could have been real.”

His face was glowing the way Stiles’ had been when he’d been discussing his magic, though it might have been a trick of the firelight. The look in his eyes wasn’t any kind of trick, though. That look was pure, nostalgic joy.

“Did you wait for your Hogwarts letter, too?” Stiles asked eagerly, forgetting his embarrassment at being broke in his delight in knowing that Derek had lost himself in the same world he had.

“No,” Derek answered. “I wanted one, but I’d read the books, and it didn’t look like they’d let werewolves go. Lupin was this anomaly. Laura convinced me wolves would never be allowed.”

Stiles felt his chest tighten at that, the same way it did when he remembered the look on Scott’s face when his father had left them, the way it did when his Dad apologised for not being able to give him more money, the way it did when he’d seen the desperately exhausted look on Isaac’s face. It was an awful mix of pity and revulsion and an overwhelming need to make it _better_.

“That’s bullshit, man,” he countered firmly. “C’mon, of course Dumbledore would have let you go. He could see past all that prejudice crap. And hey, just think. I bet you anything Hermione repealed all those stupid anti-werewolf laws,” he added, a little too much earnestness slipping into his voice.

Derek watched him silently for a moment, before ducking his head, attempting to hide a small smile. Attempting and failing. Stiles saw it lit up by the flicker of the fire, and he matched it with his own.

“Well, it was my favourite,” Derek said finally. “And … it’s a comfort. That meeting was disturbing. Kind of freaked me out. I just wanted to have something familiar nearby for a second.”

For maybe the first time since he could even remember, Stiles was left speechless. Derek, if anyone at all, had seemed like nothing would faze him. And even if it did, he didn’t seem like the kind of man who’d turn to an old book he loved for comfort. He must have stayed quiet for too long, though, because Derek began to look embarrassed.

“It’s stupid,” he muttered, clearly uncomfortable. “Forget about it, it was just – “

“No!” Stiles burst out. “No, it’s not dumb at all! It’s sweet, I just didn’t expect it. I do the same thing, I’ve still got a whole bunch of stuff that was my Mom’s,” he continued, ignoring the little pang he always got thinking about her. “Whenever I’m, you know, depressed or scared or nervous or whatever, I use all the cooking stuff she left me, and – “ he cut himself off there, unwilling to share quite so much. He used the few magical things she’d left him too, but that was private, special. He didn’t tell anyone that.

“That’s nice,” Derek replied, and though the words should have sounded sarcastic and callous, they were nothing but sincere. At least the answer seemed to have satisfy him. “You looked like you were enjoying it, back there,” he added, clearing his throat and straightening up when their food was set in front of them, a heaped bowl of creamy pasta and crisp garlic bread.

Since Derek was going to pay no matter what he said, Stiles had already decided there was no use pretending like he wasn’t starving, and dug into the meal happily.

“I was,” he answered through a mouthful. “It’s been ages since I went to a meeting. And they’re not usually all laced with creepy undertones.” He swallowed, took a sip of the water provided, and bit into another large mouthful. He figured that since Derek was doing the same, with little care for how he looked, it was OK to eat like he normally did.

“You must be powerful,” Derek replied, though he waited until he’d swallowed his food to speak. “If you’ve been practising so long. I’ve been dabbling for years, and I still can’t do half what you can. I can’t make heat.”

The blossoming warmth in the pit of his stomach had nothing to do with the warm food now sitting in it. He couldn’t help the pleased smile from creeping its way onto his face, even as he shook his head.

“Well, I – I’m not bad,” he brushed off, even though he was kind of aching to say yeah, yeah he was powerful, and he’d worked really hard to get that way. He was learning to be more modest. “I can do some cool stuff. But it’s hard work, and I have to be careful not to let it get to my head.”

“Mom wouldn’t keep you around if she thought you were weak enough to let it corrupt you,” Derek replied, as if it were common sense, and Stiles should have known that. “Those people, though. You shouldn’t be associating with them. They’re dangerous. If I could arrest them all right now, I would.”

“You can’t?” Stiles asked, curious. “I thought you could do whatever you wanted, you’re the boss’ son. And technically, that whole thing was illegal, not just the creepy elements of it. You _could_ arrest them all.”

He didn’t particularly want Derek to do that, though. There were a few there that should probably be locked up, but some of them looked completely normal. Harmless, like him. And some were his _friends_. He wouldn’t forgive himself if Elinor got arrested because of him. Derek seemed to pick up on that worry, because he shook his head.

“I can’t just do anything I want, and if I wanted to arrest someone, in any official capacity, I’d have to run it by Mom. And this … wasn’t exactly on the books. She wouldn’t be pleased. Besides, I don’t have the kind of back up to take them quietly,” he explained, mopping up the sauce at the bottom of his bowl with a hunk of garlic bread.

Stiles considered this for a moment, and then realised it made sense. He doubted Talia would have authorised him going along on any kind of undercover operation. And Derek _had_ said it wasn’t going to be official.

“A few of those people seemed kind of shady, especially that – weirdo at the end, but I mean, we’re not all like that,” he said finally, his voice much smaller than he’d meant it to be. Derek’s face softened for a second, and he looked for a moment as if he was going to smile again, but held it back.

“I know,” he assured. “Some of them seemed OK. But it’s still worrying that there’s this _movement_ on the rise. I just think you should be staying away from that whole scene for a while.” Going by everything he’d said, and done, tonight, Derek was probably just genuinely concerned about him, but all Stiles heard was being told what to do.

“That whole scene are my friends,” he snapped. “And just because you saw some bad people, _once_ , on your first time, doesn’t mean I’m going to stop seeing my friends. A whole bunch of them are really good people, and at least they _like_ having me around.” His voice was a lot harder, angrier, than it had been when he’d started.

Derek sat back in his seat, looking suitably chastened. Good.

“I asked you to come with me, didn’t I?” he asked after a long moment, and if Stiles had thought he was calm, or remorseful, the bite in his tone proved him wrong. “I can’t do anything about you pissing off everyone at work, that’s all you. Maybe if you followed some rules, like the rest of us have to do, if you showed some humility, if you _respected_ them, you’d be more popular.”

Stiles felt a strange, hot-cold mixture of shame and anger, and he wasn’t sure whether to straighten up and defend himself, or slump back down and accept it. As a sort of compromise, he did neither, staying as he was.

“I do respect them,” he countered.

“No, you don’t,” Derek scoffed, and Stiles was surprised to find that the incredulity coming from _Derek_ hurt more than it did in general. “You just breezed right into this operation expecting to be the best, to have the best, you didn’t take any notice of how it works. You’re a human and you walked into a den of wolves and completely _ignored_ the hierarchy we have. You _could_ be fantastic. You _could_ be the best. If you did as you were told, if you paid your dues first, and showed some respect for our way of life.”

There was so much _heat_ in his voice that now Stiles was the one sitting back in his seat, shocked. And now there was definitely more shame than anger, because none of that sounded totally unfamiliar. Looking back, without being arrogant, or clinging to his pride like he usually did, that didn’t sound so far-fetched. It kind of sounded like him, actually.

“I – “ he started, but his voice cracked, actually cracked, and he shut his mouth in horror, looking down into his now empty bowl. He heard a sigh, but he didn’t look up, afraid that if he did, his fucking eyes would water, too, and that was the last thing he needed.

“Look,” Derek said, much softer now. More like Scott sounded sometimes, when Stiles needed him. “I’m not saying you’re some terrible person, and I’m not saying I hate you. I’m just saying, you wonder why things aren’t working for you. That’s why. You can fix it.”

Stiles never was very good at _fixing_ things, though. He mostly excelled at fucking them up, and then running away from the mess he’d made. He didn’t want to run away from this one, though. This one was pretty much his whole life, his dream job, his friends. Everything.

“I don’t know how to fix it,” he muttered. He still hadn’t looked up, not even when he heard Derek laugh under his breath.

“Trust me, it’s not that hard to fix. This is _easy_. I’ve had experience trying to fix something impossible, you can do this,” the wolf said. He sounded confident. Like there was no doubt in what he believed, not even a grain of it.

“Is it just because you’re enough of an asshole to tell me the truth, or no one else cared enough to tell me?” he asked, finally lifting his head. His eyes stayed dry. Thank fuck.

Derek, rather than being offended, instead offered him a tight-lipped smile.

“Would you have listened to anyone who isn’t as much of an asshole as me?” he countered. He had a point. Probably not. Definitely not. He would have thought it was just more people hating him. Derek didn’t seem like he’d bother making something up to hurt him.

“I’ll try,” he offered. “I can’t promise I’ll be any good at it, but I can try. I’ve never known more than one wolf.”

“Well, now you know a whole pack. You like learning, don’t you? Learn.” There was nothing pitying in Derek’s tone, and it was that that warmed Stiles back to him, rather than being hurt and angry. He didn’t like being pitied. If this was just a matter of fact assessment of how he’d fucked up, that he could handle.

“Thanks,” he murmured, struggling not to let the embarrassment he felt show. “I need a kick in the ass sometimes.”

“Yeah, I got that impression,” Derek said. Not even remotely nastily. Derek was bizarre, Stiles decided all over again. This was the perfect opportunity to lord it over him, to make certain he felt bad, and he wasn’t taking it.

“You should be getting home,” he added, when Stiles stayed quiet. “You’ve got work tomorrow morning, and your meeting in two days.”

“How do you know about that?” Stiles asked, surprised.

“Peter,” Derek scowled, his mouth twisting up in distaste. Stiles had momentarily forgotten about Peter, that he was Derek’s Uncle. And there was that little look of revulsion he’d got from nearly everyone. And from _Derek_. Given everything they’d just talked about though, he decided it was probably disrespectful to ask what that was all about. And he was going to try seriously fucking hard to be respectful from now on.

“Oh,” he replied, instead of asking what his curiosity dearly wanted him to. “Yeah, I do. Probably should get home. Thanks. For – completely chewing me out. And asking me to help you tonight,” he added. “It means a lot. Knowing that _someone_ thinks I’m capable enough to do this job.”

“You are capable. You just have to learn how to show it,” Derek said, shrugging, tucking a fifty dollar note into the leather billfold.

It might not have been the nicest, sweetest compliment he’d ever had in his life – those had come from his Mom and Dad, and he held them pretty dear to his heart, but it stayed warm in his chest, pleasant, until he fell asleep, long after Derek had taken him home.


	11. Chapter 11

The door was locked, he’d made sure of that. Not that, he supposed, the door being locked mattered all that much, not when they’d gone to such great pains to ensure that they wouldn’t be caught. The cover story was sound, and no one would come looking for him for a good while. The guise of a business meeting was adequate enough, considering Peter did actually do business with him.

If anyone questioned why the meetings always took so long, it was put down to the usual laziness and tendency of Senators to do whatever they pleased, and grumbled about behind doors where no one cared too much for those who held important seats. It was never suspected, or at least not feasibly, what they were actually doing.

Good thing, too, because if anyone did suspect, the whole operation could come tumbling down, and Peter would be – displeased, to say the least. He’d put good long years into this plan, had dedicated his life, the life he had right now, to ensure that this all worked, that his perfectly formed puzzle pieces all slotted into place.

He ought to have been thinking more about the man beneath him as he thrust into him, but in all honesty, he was thinking more about the consequences his next move would have, and how carefully he needed to plan it. Thankfully, Mateo was always pleasantly malleable when he’d just come, which was half the point of even carrying on this farce.

He dipped his head to press a few kisses to the man’s mouth as he drove forward particularly hard, angling his hips the way he knew would be the last straw, and sure enough, Mateo was crying out into his mouth, body arching up against him as his orgasm crashed over. Impatient though he was, Peter let the man take his time to come down before he let himself come, momentary pleasure blinding him to anything but _yesgoodfuck_.

He hated the way orgasm laid him low, the way it made him no different to any other human on the planet, the same even as _just_ humans, mortals, the same as this pathetic thing he was fucking. It was a necessary evil, and one that he couldn’t help but love. Crave. He hated that he craved feeling so fucking good, when all it did was make him so fucking weak.

“God, Peter,” Mateo was moaning quietly, and he rolled off the man, lying on his back and panting, skin sticky with sweat and come. “Been too long. Too long since we’ve been together, _mi lobo_.”

As he lay catching his breath, murmuring back his own false lamentations about how very much he’d missed this, he wondered, not for the first time, whether or not telling Mateo about wolves had been a good idea. He’d made certain that the man was in love with him before he’d done it, yes, so that even if he had taken the news badly, he’d still want to be with him, he’d still be tied to him. He couldn’t afford that kind of fuck up.

But he’d taken it better than expected, much better, had only been a little confused, barely scared like most humans when they were given the privilege of the information. He’d fallen well and truly, stronger and harder than Peter had anticipated, but it had been a blessing, rather than a burden. So far.

“You know we can’t do this _too_ often,” he said after a moment, voice soft and still a little breathy. “Don’t want to _arouse_ suspicion, mm?”

Mateo sighed, but it turned into a low chuckle, and he let his head tip to the side, lips brushing against Peter’s shoulder. He’d long gotten used to the incessant touching that came along with keeping up a fake relationship like this, and though he couldn’t abide the useless, affectionate brushes, they rewarded him in spades.

“I know,” he breathed, though he sounded unhappy about it. To be honest, Peter didn’t know how much more _often_ he could take. While these little visits were all well and good for a brief fuck, they also came with the added strings of having to pretend he was in love, and while lying came easily to him, he wasn’t fond of acting like some lovesick teenager. He’d seen plenty of those already.

“How’s the plan coming?” Mateo asked after a moment. If he didn’t still sound fucked out and mostly happy, Peter would have been suspicious. The only safe places to discuss ‘the plan’ were here, in bed, where no one could be listening to them, and he’d told the other man as much. At least he was a good listener.

“It’s coming,” he answered, deliberately cagey. This would go better if Mat thought something was going wrong. He’d be much more eager to do everything he could to help if it meant it would benefit _the plan_.

“What do you mean?” he asked, and there it was, that little flicker of panic Peter had been hoping for. “Is everything OK?”

He made deliberate little noises, brushing it off, whilst keeping a frown etched into his features, a worried kind of frown. Stressed.

“It’s nothing, Mat, it’s nothing, really,” he hushed. “Just a small hitch, it’s alright, don’t worry.”

“You can tell me, Peter, if something’s not OK,” he replied immediately, concern and just a little irritation tinging his tone.

God, humans were easily to manipulate.

Rolling onto his side, he propped himself up on his elbow and pretended to search Mat’s face for any sign of distrust. He sighed, softened, and nodded.

“I know,” he said quietly. He knew just how to train his voice for this. Pretend to be ashamed, pretend to be concerned. It’d be eaten up. “I know, I just don’t want to worry you. You already have a lot going on.” As if he cared about what was going on that didn’t involve him.

“Trust me, Peter, you’re not a burden. Tell me. What’s wrong with the plan?” This was the sweet spot, where he’d get Mat to do anything he wanted.

“There’s someone after me,” he confided, lowering his voice to emulate some kind of fear. This was the part that was hardest, pretending to be _scared_. He couldn’t remember the last time something scared him. Made him angry, yes, but nothing really _scared_ him. Probably why he was so willing to invest himself so entirely into this plan.

“What?” Mat breathed, eyes widening and leaning in. _That_ , that looked like true fear. Real, human fear. Maybe he could get his own face to look like that with some practise. “ _Who?_ ”

Expression growing a little stormier, and that was much easier to feign, Peter shook his head once, jerkily, like he didn’t even want to think about it.

“Some kid. This pain in the ass little _brat._ He’s started working for my sister, with my nephew. You know how they feel about me. I think he’s trying to have me arrested. At the very _least_. He’s … he uses magic,” he paused, letting that sink in. He’d told Mat terrible things about magic, about how witches were evil and vicious and ought to be exterminated.

“Well, we have to do something. _Cristo_ , is this what you’ve been worrying about? This isn’t OK. What can we do?” he swore, now sitting up, looking furious, and determined. A nice mix.

“Well … I did have a plan. A half plan, the beginnings of one. I’ve been trying, Mateo, to find a way for us to be together more often, but this kid is taking up so much of my time. But – no, I can’t,” he stalled, ducking his eyes, looking suitably ashamed.

“You can tell me anything, mi amor. We don’t judge each other,” the human said gently, and just for a second, just for one _small_ second, Peter felt a twinge of the closest thing to regret he was ever going to feel, when he thought of how very badly he was going to ruin this man’s life.

“I’m just getting desperate,” he whispered, flicking his eyes back up, making sure they stayed wide. “I don’t know how much longer it might be before Stilinski tries to hurt me. He’s already – he’s tried, but it didn’t stick, and – “

But he didn’t finish, because Mat cut in angrily, just as he’d hoped he would.

“He’s _tried_? He’s hurt you?” he snapped, fiery. “Show me. Show me right now.”

He paused, like he was deciding whether or not to do as he was told, but rolled to his other side, and showed a large burn spread across his lower back, a deep, ugly red. He’d been careful to be so quick and rough in their fucking that Mat wouldn’t have had time to see it before.

He revelled in the horrified gasp he was met with, and flinched away from the fingertips that brushed over the burn, though it didn’t hurt as much as he feigned. He rolled back, grimacing.

“What did he _do_?” hissed Mat, looking a little nauseated. This was working even better than he’d hoped. He closed his eyes, kept them closed, looked pained, and spoke only after a good long minute.

“A spell. I think it’s a spell,” he answered. “There was a hex bag in my bed. And this was there when I woke up.”

In truth, he’d pressed the iron red-hot to his skin and forced himself not to heal. A small amount of pain for a large reward.

“Stilinski,” Mat whispered, clearly thinking. “I know that name. I know – _I know_ ,” he burst out, looking triumphant. “He has an appointment with me tomorrow morning!”

Peter nodded slowly, laying a hand on Mat’s hip.

“I wasn’t going to tell you, but I think you’re in danger. And I don’t care so much if he’s doing this to me, but _you_ ,” he countered.  

“Stop it,” Mat snapped, looking both worried, and thoroughly unimpressed with him. “Tell me what we have to do.”

Perfect. So easy. He hadn’t even really had to try.  

“If you could just – if _we_ could just – let him meet with you, listen to whatever he has to say, and when he’s left, you could report him. Say he’d tried to bribe you or – something that would get him arrested,” he suggested, tentative.

Mat hesitated, and for a moment, it looked as if he was going to say no, back out, see that Peter was lying and want nothing to do with it at all. But then his features cleared, took on a steely resolve, and he knew he was home safe.

Love made such _idiots_ out of people.

“I can do that,” he murmured against Peter’s lips. “They’ll put the brat away and we’ll be safe. We can get back to being together. Properly.” He sounded so very hopeful that Peter half wanted to let him in on the endgame and let him know they were never going to be _together_ , and that he was just a step in the long, long plan to destroy his nephew.

“Always,” he purred instead.

* * *

There was something strange about the sample under his microscope, but he couldn’t focus his attention on what it actually was. (In reality, it was that the cells kept multiplying every time he looked away).

Deaton was sat on his other side, as he always was. His silence was usually a comfort, for the man never tried to initiate conversation unless he needed something, an honesty to the selfishness of the exchange Derek admired. Today, however, he was on edge. The silence, so often his friend, was betraying him, making him even more irritable. He had a mountain of work to get through, which he might have enjoyed last week, the slow but steady lessening of the pile a satisfactory accomplishment. Today, it seemed insurmountable, crushing him. He was never going to focus enough today to even make a dent in it.

To be honest, he wasn’t even sure why he’d come into the office at all. He knew that today wasn’t going to be a good day, he’d known from the moment he woke up in a cold sweat. Nightmares. They always heralded a bad day to come. Isaac had tried to talk to him this morning, but he was grumpy and short, and the Beta had given up.

Now, instead of the report he could be compiling about the kind of creature they were hunting, something that could clearly heal at a fast rate, judging from the cells, all he could see flashing behind his lids were fragments of the nightmares. Some were familiar, the usual horrifying glimpses of the past. Smoke, and flame. Burning flesh. Screams, not just his own.

But today, there were new images. Stiles’ face had flickered in and out, the crushed look he’d had when Derek had called him out. But more importantly, the fear he knew those features could form. Fear, and shouting, shouting Derek’s name. And then Isaac had been shouting for him, too. Isaac’s voice, coming from his sister’s face.

He shook himself, pushing away the lens with a hard shove, rubbing over his eyes with one large hand. Deaton shot him a sideways glance, but said nothing.  

It wasn’t as if nightmares were anything new. They were almost as much of a fixture in his life as family dinners with his Mom and Laura. Nightmares had been with him ever since he was seventeen, and they weren’t going away anytime soon.

The addition of Stiles was new, though. The newest. He’d figured out how his mind worked, mostly, and he knew that when someone popped up in his nightmares, screaming for his help, it usually meant that they’d made some kind of impact on him. That they were important. His whole family, mostly gone now, always yelled for his help. Isaac had joined their voices a few nights after he’d bitten the boy.

And now, bizarrely, Stiles.

“You look tired, honey.”

He looked up, and found himself looking right into his mother’s eyes, the woman hovering over his desk. She tried to keep from being his mother when they were at work, but on occasion, she broke out the pet names, and Derek had lost too much to begrudge them. He just tried hard not to let anyone see that they made him happy.

“Didn’t sleep well last night,” he answered, voice short and gruff, far too much so to be addressing his Alpha. His mom, he could snap at, and only suffer a cuff to the back of his head.

She eyed him for a long moment, before sighing, and leaning against his desk.

“You need to see someone again?” she asked, very quietly, though that didn’t make much of a difference in a room full of werewolves, and Derek hadn’t forgotten that everyone would hear it. He glared hard, hard enough that he didn’t even need to flash his eyes for her to get the message.

“Right. Well, you come see me if you need to,” she amended, looking a little shame-faced. Derek’s glare was something to cower at, even his own mother.

He sighed hard as she retreated to her office, no less stressed than he was a few moments ago. Like hell he needed the whole office to be speculating even more about him. He was fairly sure it was common knowledge that he had issues, and that he’d seen doctors in the past, but no one had ever brought it up with him, not since he’d broken Jackson’s nose for it.

He was sure that the nightmares had been set off by that coven. Last night had shaken him more than he cared to admit. Being so openly despised, he was used to, that hadn’t fazed him much at all. It had been unpleasant, sure, but nothing he couldn’t handle. Stiles had seemed to handle it enough for the both of them, anyway. Derek wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d started a brawl.

But the rest of it, that had set his teeth on edge. The ‘magical cooperation’. Derek had had enough experience with sugar coated words like that to know that they weren’t all truthful, and they weren’t benign. The woman who had questioned him, he could _smell_ her. And not just what she’d been trying to project, either. She smelled of falsity, and underneath, there had been a heavy, dense sweetness. Too strong.

He tuned into the chatter from across the room in an attempt to distract himself from what he was sure unhealthy dwelling. He didn’t care too much for what any of them had to say at the best of times, but for now, a little triviality would help.

“I don’t know why they insist on hiring them,” Jackson was muttering, surly as usual. Derek could tell from the tone. He looked up just to be sure, though, and there it was, the sullen pout he always wore. Kid needed a good kick up the ass.

“It’s diversity or whatever,” Erica replied, with a roll of her eyes. “So that the people in the know don’t think we’re some kind of army by conspiracy, going to rise up against them. As if we have the numbers for that.”

“It’s bullshit. They’ve got no place here. They’re not _helpful_ ,” someone scoffed, and Derek had to crane his neck to see who had spoken. Matt. His mouth was twisted into an ugly scowl.

“Just look at fucking Stilinski,” he continued. “Talia hired him out of some freaking charity, cos she liked McCall, and all he does is fuck things up. Look, I’m not necessarily saying it’s his _fault_ , he can’t help it. Humans just aren’t suited to this, and it’s a fucking detriment to the rest of us.”

The others muttered their agreement, but Derek felt his spine twitch. Hadn’t he been telling Stiles to make more of an effort to fit in? To try to learn some respect for them? He’d assumed that they’d already been respecting him. Maybe not.

“It’s like they just don’t understand that we’re _better_ ,” Jackson added, looking extraordinarily smug. “We’d work better if we didn’t have to look out for the human, you know. Worry about him getting hurt or doing something stupid. He should just leave it to the professionals and go and find some human suitable job. Like McDonalds. Or filing papers.”

Derek stood at that, when they began to laugh, and stalked over to the small group of them, ignoring the quiet voice from behind him, Deaton’s attempt at caution.

“You think that’s funny?” he asked, voice low and dangerous, looking them over. They didn’t seem nearly as smug now that he was towering over them.

“Look, Hale, we were just – I mean, it’s the truth, he’s a human, he doesn’t belong here,” Erica said warily.

“You know what you sound like right now?” he replied, calm. On the outside, anyway. “Hunters.”

The word seemed to shock the room silent, the whole room. All three of them, those who had been talking, looked up at him, horrified. The ones who had been quiet throughout, namely Boyd and a few others, looked equally as shocked.

“ _Hunters_?” Erica breathed, before she narrowed her eyes. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“I’m not. You might not have reached planning how to kill them yet, but every time you say human, they’re saying wolf,” he countered. Even his mother had come to lean in her office doorway, watching quietly.      

It seemed to be too much for Jackson. His face had gotten redder without each word, and he spluttered for a second before he exploded, standing, coming nose to nose with Derek.

“Come on, Hale. You’re not trying to tell me you don’t think Stilinski’s fucking useless?” he spat. “We’d be better off without him. He’s gonna get himself killed on a mission he shouldn’t even be on. Or you know what? Maybe we should let him. Less trouble for us.”

Derek didn’t even have time to swing his hand back before Jackson was knocked to the ground with a massive _thump_ , a snarling, snapping Isaac pinning him down, fully shifted.

“Take it back,” he growled. Derek could feel the anger radiating off him in waves, could feel his power, the way it tugged at his, the way it made his eyes want to bleed red, want to defend Isaac, help him, take out the threat.

He didn’t. He was too shocked. And apparently, so was everyone else, because they all scooted back, but no one moved to intervene. Not even Talia. Derek would decide later that she was testing his ability as an Alpha to control his Beta, but at that second, he’d forgotten all about her.

“Get the fuck off me, Lahey,” Jackson snarled, half-shifting, trying to throw Isaac off him. Either Isaac was too strong for him, or he was too caught off guard, but it didn’t work. Isaac snapped hard at his neck, both an injury and an insult, because it cut skin, and blood began to drip to the floor, and it was like being marked.

“Take it back,” Isaac repeated, his mouth now smeared with blood. He looked as if he was going to go ahead and take another chunk out of the other wolf, so Derek finally forced his muscles to move, and threw himself forward, looping his arms around Isaac’s waist and dragging him up and off. The Beta snarled and shouted obscenities at him, but Derek flashed his eyes, and Isaac quieted, though his chest was still heaving as he glared hard.

Jackson scrambled to his feet, clearly shaken, holding a hand to his bleeding neck.

“What the _fuck_ is wrong with you?” he spat. “Christ, this is why we shouldn’t have _pups,_ either.”

Derek had to fight hard not to let go and attack Jackson himself.

Isaac snarled, and this time, Derek matched it, baring his teeth, feral. Jackson was still indignant, he could see, but there was also a flicker of fear there now.

“He told you to take it back,” Derek growled, his eyes red now, staying that way. Everyone in the office knew he was an Alpha, but no one had ever mentioned it. Talia had forbidden them doing so, when she saw how self-conscious he was about it. Most Alphas earned their power through death, and Talia had willingly shared hers with him.

“It’s true,” Jackson spat back, and Isaac wrenched against Derek’s arms again, to no avail.

“Take. It. Back,” Derek grit out. “Or I’ll let him go and he can tear your goddamn throat out.” From anyone else, that might have been an empty threat, but everyone watching knew from Derek, it was deadly serious.

“For god’s sake, Jacks, just do it,” hissed Erica, looking well and truly cowed. She eyed Derek’s red eyes, the sheer power wafting off him, and recoiled.

“I fucking take it back,” Jackson blurted out, just when Derek was about to loosen his grip on Isaac. “I don’t want him dead, OK? Jesus, will you control the fucking kid, Derek?”

His neck had healed, but the smeared blood remained.

“Keep your opinions to yourself. He’s trying to help us,” Derek growled in way of reply, and let go of Isaac, though he kept a close eye on him, to make sure he didn’t lunge forward and attack again. He didn’t, but he didn’t shift back either, glaring at Jackson, who was still flat on his ass, looking shocked and angry.

“I ever hear you talking about Stiles like that again, I’m gonna make you wish you didn’t heal so fast, so I couldn’t break your bones as many times as I’m gonna.” His voice was low and furious, almost identical to the tone Derek had taken, and hell if he didn’t realise that. He felt an odd pang of pride, and looped an arm around Isaac’s neck, steering him round.

“C’mon, pup,” he murmured, trying to calm him down, even when his blood was still simmering in his veins, ready to bubble over at any moment. “Leave him, he got the message.”

Isaac was shaking as Derek led him out, but for once, he didn’t reek of fear. All Derek could smell was pure anger.

“I should have fucking killed him,” he snapped. “Did you fucking hear what he said? _Dead_ , he said, we should just let him _die_.” He only managed to shift back mid-speech when Derek pressed a claw gently to the back of his neck, a reminder to reign it in.

“I heard, Isaac,” he answered, breathing a lot easier now that they were outside and away from the thrumming of anxious heartbeats all around them. He could hear whispers growing into hisses growing into an argument as they left, but he didn’t care enough to turn round and try to fix it. “But if you hurt him for real, you would have been the one in trouble. And I would have had to punish you. I don’t want to fucking do that,” he added with a sigh.

“He talks all the time about no one wanting him here, and it’s fucking true, isn’t it? You’ve got no idea how hard it is to be a human in that place? I only had to deal with it for a month, and you bit me. He’s been dealing it with it for ages, and – they’re _awful_ to him,” Isaac burst out, but he was deflating with each word, now just looking sad, not angry.

Derek felt his chest tighten, the old familiar sting of guilt returning to him, and remembered the crushed look on Stiles’ face when he’d said – well, pretty much exactly what those assholes had been saying. Not quite as bad, but the same principle. And yes, he stood by most of it, Stiles hadn’t attempted to learn how they worked, assuming that he could charge in and be the hero of the place, but clearly, _they_ hadn’t tried to work him out, either.

Derek had barely considered that they were intimidating, because his default mood was mute, or grumpy. He hadn’t thought the others were so blatantly – _prejudiced_ , but Stiles clearly knew he was hated. Derek hadn’t even tried to tell him it wasn’t true.

Isaac looked over at him, strangely, and he realised that he’d been quiet for a long moment.

“What’s wrong?” the Beta asked. Derek shook his head, trying to dispel the guilt that was now tightening up his chest more and more. He _hated_ guilt.

“Nothing. I just – I never realised they felt that way. I thought we were past this hating humans bullshit,” he explained, voice a little hoarse. Isaac shoved him gently, but laid his head on his shoulder the moment later.

“You know they’re gonna know now,” he said quietly, most of the anger having seeped out of him. “About you biting me.”

In all his fury, Derek had completely forgotten that he’d just shown himself as Isaac’s Alpha. His Mom wouldn’t be happy. Though, he hoped, he had handled himself pretty well. Maybe she’d be a little proud.

“I don’t care,” he answered tiredly. “Let them know. Probably been covering it up for too long now, anyway.” Someone was bound to find out at some point, he supposed. It was better that they saw him as strong, and defensive, than letting Isaac walk all over him (which he did).

“Does this mean I can talk to you now?” Isaac asked, and there was no disguising the hope in his words. Derek snorted, and nodded.

“I highly doubt anyone else is going to talk to us. Might as well talk to each other,” he said. “Scott probably still will. And Stiles.”

And Stiles. Stiles would for sure. There was that, at least.

“Don’t tell him what happened, OK?” he added after a second, pulling back to eye Isaac. “He doesn’t need to hear it. It’ll just upset him.”

Isaac nodded, leaning against him. He seemed to have deflated now that all the anger had left him, left him looking like a rag doll, slumped up at his side.

“Were they like this with you?” Derek added after a moment, when they were both quiet. Isaac snorted under his breath, and nodded. He looked tired again.

“I don’t think you realise how scary you people are,” he answered, voice flat and dry. “On top of being mythical monsters, you’re all _mean_. Like fucking high schoolers.”

He must have stayed silent for too long, because Isaac looked up through his lashes at him, seemingly concerned.

“Not _you_ ,” he added quickly. “You weren’t mean. You were just – anti-social. I don’t think you talked to a single person until you came to talk to me.”

That was true. He really hadn’t spoken to anyone in maybe weeks, anyone but Deaton and his mother, until he’d approached Isaac. And even doing that had required a fair bit of courage on his part. Courage, and one too many bruises and limps. He hated watching people suffer. (Mostly).

“We’ll make it better,” he said softly. For Isaac, and for Stiles.

* * *

So, OK, he was a little nervous. It had been a long time coming, this meeting, and he knew how important it was. He didn’t want to fuck it up. Not that he thought that was likely – he’d gone over his notes a million times, he’d scoured the guy’s Wikipedia a million and one times, and he thought he was sufficiently, prepared.

Still, that didn’t mean he was any less nervous.

He was pretty sure that if this didn’t work out, his job would be well and truly gone. And that just wasn’t going to happen. He couldn’t lose this job, not when he loved it so much, even when he was relegated to the politics.

Peter had texted him earlier the night before, supposedly checking to make sure that he knew where he was going the next morning, but Stiles got the distinct feeling it had been more than that. He could practically feel the oil dripping right out of his phone. Peter Hale definitely put him off.

But then, he’d worked with worse, and gotten through it. Hell, some of the professors he’d had during college had been a whole lot worse than Peter Hale. Peter might have been a little oily, and creepy, but he hadn’t tried anything. Stiles had had his ass ogled and groped by more than one supposedly straight, upstanding member of the faculty before. At least his ass remained untouched with this one.

All in all, this job was easier than some of the stuff he could be doing. He could get this meeting over, and surely it wouldn’t take too long, an hour at most, and then he could focus on procrastinating all his prep for the next one. And lunch. He could definitely go for lunch. Pasta, maybe. That pasta last night had been good.

It was the thought of that pasta, and the look on Derek’s face when he’d come out of that meeting, that stayed at the forefront of his mind as he made his way to the Senator’s office, barely taking in any of his surroundings. The Jeep was running better than ever, even if he looked a little strange driving it now, in his suit and long coat.

Now that he’d been exposed to the bombshell that had been Lydia Martin, he was a little disappointed by every receptionist that greeted him. The young woman behind the desk as he waited to be admitted into Mathew Ramirez’s office was brunette and smiley and her fingernails clacked against her keyboard. Still, she was no sharp-tongued, strawberry blonde powerhouse. Stiles took another look, and then told himself to stop being such an asshole.

He wasn’t interested, anyway, even if he could get her number. (He probably couldn’t).

He’d only been left sitting maybe ten minutes before the door opened, and a tall man stepped out, straight toward him. He was clearly stockily built, the kind of body you got from some dedicated gym-going, and his skin was just dark enough to pass as definitely not white. He was handsome.

“Mr. Stilinski?” he asked, and Stiles stood quickly, taking a step forward and catching his shoe on his coat a little, making the movement awkward and stilted.

“Yeah, hi,” he said, holding out a hand. He hadn’t bothered bringing the briefcase, since all he was going to be doing this time around was talking. All he needed was his phone in his pocket, and a good dose of charm. “Senator Ramirez?”

Ramirez clasped his hand hard in his own, squeezing tight, tight enough that Stiles’ eyes almost watered. If he didn’t know any better, he might have thought the man was trying to break his hand.

“Come on in,” the other man replied, letting go of his hand and striding back into his office, but not before pausing at his receptionist’s desk. “I don’t want to be disturbed, Amanda,” he told her, voice firm.

Huh. Was he really so important of a meeting that he warranted a no interruptions order? Maybe. Maybe the guy was just kind of a tool. There was that option, too.

Stiles followed him into the office, taking a seat in the rather hard looking chair opposite the desk. Ramirez hovered by the door for a moment, locking it with a click, before he too took his seat across from Stiles.

“So. What can I do for you today?” he asked, fingers twitching a little as he drummed one or two on the wood of the desk.

“Well, let me say first, it’s a pleasure to meet you, sir. I’ve heard a lot about you,” Stiles started, offering up a smile. A little schmooze never hurt anyone.

“Really?” Ramirez said, his voice flat and unimpressed. Stiles faltered for a second, unsure how to take it. Usually, when he flattered people it at least put them in a good mood. The senator looked almost – pissed off by it.

“Uh, yeah,” Stiles answered, trying to get back into his rhythm. “All good things, don’t worry. I’m working with Talia Hale, I’m sure you’ve been briefed. We thought that you deserved more time than just one of our representatives could offer, so here I am. I mean, don’t get me wrong, Peter Hale still has his job, but they thought he could use some help,” he explained, hoping that he was coming across professional and friendly.

“Yes, well,” Ramirez muttered, looking down at his hand and avoiding Stiles’ eye. There was definitely something going on here, and for the life of him, he couldn’t work out what he was doing wrong. “I usually deal purely with Peter, and to be honest, I don’t know what it is they think you’re here to do. I’ve made my mind up.”

It was a good thing he could bite his tongue, because there was a nasty retort right on the tip of it.

“Hear me out. I think if you heard a little more about what we do, you’d see how important the department is,” Stiles tried. “And if not, no harm no foul.”

It had seemed like a safe enough move, a placating move, the kind of thing door-sellers tried when they were hocking their product. Instead, it seemed to serve as an aggravator. Ramirez’s eyes popped in his head, and all of a sudden, he looked furious. Blatantly, unveiled, furious.

“No harm? Is that supposed to be some kind of _joke_?” he spat, rising on his feet and towering over Stiles. Shocked, Stiles stared wide-eyed for a moment before he scooted back in his chair a little. His hackles were up now, and there was something _wrong_ itching all over his skin.

“A joke? No, sir, I’m sorry if I’ve offended you, but – “

But even that wasn’t working, and Ramirez was getting angrier, moving out from behind the desk, his body squared and stiff, spoiling for a fight. Stiles jumped up from his own seat, taking a step back on instinct.

“I know what you are,” the older man hissed. Stiles could smell sweat on him, nervous sweat. “You evil little bastard. I know what you’ve been doing.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I think we should just calm down.” Stiles’ voice was struggling to stay calm though, his own fear seeping into it, and he took another step back, a miniscule step toward the door.

“You’re never going to hurt us again, do you understand?” Ramirez snarled, and god damn, he looked angry. “You’ll go back to hell where you belong.”

Right now, Stiles was too freaked out, and too focused to get out that damn door, out and away, to even consider that this might mean something more than clearly this dude hated the supernatural. He didn’t even give it a second thought, that it might be something _else_.

“Just – look, man, it’s alright. I’m not hurting anyone. Just let me out, and you never have to see me again,” he tried to reason, remembering the training he’d been given at the very beginning of his career.

He thought for a split second that he was going to be allowed to just _leave_ , to go and be safe, but that was never going to happen, he should have known. He’d read enough about zealots to know that once they had their mind set to pure, seething hatred, nothing changed it. He’d just never had one this close to attacking him.

He hesitated for a moment, and then lunged for the door, trying with his all might to focus his magic on unlocking it before his hand closed around the knob. His fear was making it hard, though, fear and panic, and instead of channelling right to the lock, it went wild, ineffective except for a few sparks from his fingers.

It wouldn’t have mattered much, anyway, because the second his hand closed on the doorknob, hot from the sparks, Ramirez had lunged, one hand sliding out of his pocket, and –

“ _Agh!”_

He looked down, hand dropping from the door, and found blood blossoming out in a wide dark patch from his stomach, where the knife was still stuck firmly. Stunned, he looked up to meet Ramirez’ eyes. The man looked as stunned as he was, and for a tenth of a second, they just stared at each other, silent.

The moment passed, though, and Ramirez twisted the knife hard, eliciting a choked scream from Stiles. He stumbled back on his feet, the knife slipping from the other man’s hand, and before he knew it, he was on his back, dazed and hurting.

The last thing he really registered before he blacked out was the horrified look on Ramirez’s face, and the sensation of his magic leaving him. It didn’t drain out like he’d sometimes imagined it might when he died. It shattered inside him, splitting into several shards and bursting out of him in all different directions.

Where they were going, he had no clue, but it didn’t seem to matter, because he could taste blood, and he was fast losing consciousness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many apologies for the delay in update. To all those who were worried about Stiles getting a rough deal in the last chapter, don't worry, I agreed with you all, and I already had this scene planned to show Derek how one sided he was being. That's the thing about characters, they have their flaws. 
> 
> Thanks for all the comments and kudos, and enjoy!


	12. Chapter 12

He’d been in the middle of an arrest when it happened. Granted, not a very exciting one, but the small time crime he dealt with in a small town like theirs was never very exciting. That never mattered to him: this was his home, had been Claudia’s home, and he’d always been happy to protect it. Stiles seemed to have inherited that gene, but he’d gone to find a bigger home.  

Sure, he missed the kid, but he was more proud than anything.

The shaken up looking kid in the back of his car had looked at him a little strangely, just as he was beginning to feel a little woozy. At first, it felt like he needed a plate of meatballs or the delicious, greasy fried chicken the diner down the road did that Stiles never let him eat, but then he’d stumbled back, and he couldn’t even hear the worried shout of the well-meaning delinquent.

“Holy shit, sir,” the kid had exclaimed. “Yo, Sheriff guy, are you OK?”

John didn’t answer; his eyes had rolled back in his until there was nothing but white showing, and his body had jerked, one big spasm, like something had hit him hard. Images flashed across his mind, and with another bodily shudder, he fell to his knees, bringing up his lunch on the side of the road.

The kid got off without so much as a warning; John had driven them back to the station with his foot to the floor the whole time, dropped him off, and got on the first flight to DC he could beg his way onto.

* * *

Scott didn’t throw up, but he came close. The surge of Stiles’ magic had hit him just as hard as it had John, and though Stiles had experimented with sharing little baby bursts of it with him, he’d never felt anything as powerful as this. It was like being knocked down by a werewolf the weight of a large truck.

He’d fallen back out of his seat, hitting the ground hard, but hadn’t felt any pain. All he was feeling was the overwhelming rush of _Stiles_. He could see the human’s shocked face, could see blood trickling slowly out of the corner of his mouth. And etched into his mind were a set of coordinates; he didn’t know how they’d got there, but he could guess.

“Oh my god,” Allison was saying when he came to, kneeling over him, her face contorted with worry. “Jesus, I thought you were having a fit. Are you OK?”

Scott coughed, and brought up a little bile, but swallowed it down again. There was no time to be sick, even if his guts were churning.

“Stiles is in trouble,” he blurted out, feverish and trying to get himself up off the floor. It was hard, when he felt like his bones were now laced with lead. “He needs me.”

Allison’s hand gripped his, and tugged him up, her strength rivalling his. One of the many things he adored about her.

“OK, come on, let’s go find him,” she was saying, even as he was still trying to get a hold of himself. He could feel the magic still inside him, squirming, an unwelcome intrusion. But if it would lead him to Stiles, he didn’t care.

“No, you can’t. They don’t know – “he began to say, but Allison shot him a sharp glare, and her hand squeezed tight around his own.

“If you think I’m going to let you go running off into a dangerous situation we know nothing about on your own, you’re an idiot,” she informed him. “Especially not after _that_.”

He hesitated, but the image of Stiles bleeding and hurt was stronger, much stronger, so he just nodded. Allison _would_ be a good help.

“OK. Yeah, let’s go. I think I know where he is.”

* * *

It was lucky they were together. Isaac wouldn’t have known what the fuck hit him if Derek hadn’t been there to tell him. He was still new to the supernatural world, and magical emergency calls from dying witches weren’t a common occurrence.

Derek had at least read about them.

He came out of his a second earlier than Isaac, but they were both still sputtering and gasping for breath afterwards.

“Stiles,” Isaac rasped out, eyes wide, leaning across the sofa to scrabble at his pant sleeve.

“I know,” Derek answered, hoarse. He barely had a spare second to wonder why a burst of Stiles’ magic had come to them. He was too busy trying to get his head around it. Isaac reeked of fear next to him, and that kicked him into action.

“Let’s go. Get yourself under control, we don’t need a shift in public,” he warned, getting to his feet and pulling on boots as quickly as he could, pausing only to lay a hand on the back of Isaac’s neck, calming him down.

“He’s downtown,” Isaac said, mirroring his actions and racing out the door. Derek caught a glimpse of his eyes flash yellow, but then he’d taken a breath and they were gone. There was no room in him for pride, but there would be later.

“Derek, what the fuck happened to him?” Isaac asked, oozing panic as the Camaro swerved around corners with a sharp screech. “He looked – Derek. He looked like he was dying. What happened?”

“I don’t know!” the Alpha snapped in return, his heart thumping against his ribcage. The last time he’d been this worked up, this quickly, when he got to the scene, everyone was dead and dying, and his whole world fell apart. “He got hurt, his magic called us,” he explained, voice rough. “That’s what you’re feeling.”

What they were both feeling. Derek could feel the magic inside him. He couldn’t pinpoint it to a particular spot. It was in his chest and his belly and surging through his veins all over, right down to his toes. It was burning and loud and insistent, forcing them to move, to help. It wasn’t pleasant. It felt a lot like Stiles himself.

“He’ll be fine,” Isaac said quietly, and Derek couldn’t tell if it was for him, or the kid himself. Didn’t matter either way. Neither were going to feel better about this until they’d reached Stiles and made damn sure for themselves that he’d be fine.

When they pulled up in front of the office building the magic had drawn them to, there were cop cars and news vans up and down the street, absolutely _everywhere_. Derek felt a sudden to turn and run and hide, but he pushed through it. Isaac was already out of the car and racing his way to the barrier.

“What happened?” he was frantically asking one of the reporters. Derek stepped forward to warn him not to step out of line, but he didn’t need to.

“You haven’t heard?” the young woman answered incredulously. Her expression turned lascivious when she went to explain. “A senator stabbed someone. Right there in his office. Some young kid he was meeting. No one knows his name yet, but they carted him off to hospital.”

She looked very pleased by the news. Derek’s stomach turned.

“Which hospital?” he growled, stepping forward. She eyed him for a moment, before deciding she didn’t want a fight, clearly.

“George Washington,” she answered, though reluctantly. “If you’re going there for a scoop, you’re not going to have much luck. They’re already swamped.”

Derek ignored her, turning on his heel and jogging back to the car, Isaac following quickly. They hadn’t even closed the doors properly before the engine roared back to life, and they were speeding past oncoming traffic, all coming for an ogle, no doubt.

It was a tense, silent ride to the hospital, Derek swiping more than one car in his haste. The paint was going to be fucked up on his car, but he didn’t care too much. He barely even winced when they hit the corner of an SUV hard and smashed off the left wing mirror.

“Park the car, meet me in – “ he started to say, but Isaac snarled, furious, and he stopped himself. “OK. Let’s just go. If it gets impounded, whatever,” he amended, and they jumped right out of the car, leaving it in the disabled park smack bang in the front of the emergency entrance.

The nurse at reception looked harassed, and about ready to either smack someone, or burst into tears. Derek didn’t want either.

“We need to see Stiles Stilinski,” he told her urgently, keeping his voice low. “The kid that came in with a stab wound. We’re not reporters, we don’t want to breach your protocol. We’re friends,” he tried to reason, even as the ball of magic in him reared up hard.

“ _Please,”_ Isaac added when she hesitated, and he sounded so wrecked that Derek thought even the hardest and toughest of seasoned nurses would have crumbled. Mostly, this one just looked tired.

“He’s in surgery,” she explained in one big sigh, running a hand through her hair. “And I can’t let you in to see him, but you can join the other two and wait for him in the ICU,” she added.

“Oh my god, thank you,” Isaac breathed. If there hadn’t been a partition between them, he probably would have hugged her. Derek took a quick second to wonder about ‘the other two’, but thanked her as well, and got quick directions to ICU.

“Don’t you tell _anyone_ I sent you up there,” she added, but both their backs were turned already, ducking into an elevator.

The doors opened onto a relatively quiet floor, right into a waiting area. The quiet was broken by a loud shout.

“Isaac!”

Scott was rushing toward them, ignoring the filthy looks he got from the passing nurses. His eyes were red and his hair mussed. He smelled of puke.

“Is he OK?” Isaac asked immediately, foregoing any kind of greeting. Scott paled, and shook his head.

“He’s still in surgery. They said he lost a lot of blood. They don’t know if he’s – if he’ll be OK til after, when they’re done.”

His voice was cracking, and the usual smile that lit up his features was long gone. Isaac barely hesitated, throwing his arms around the other wolf’s shoulders and scenting him. Scott welcomed it immediately, and for a moment, it was quiet again, the salty scent of fresh tears hitting the air.

Derek hung back, awkward, watching them, taking in the information. He could see a dark haired girl watching them, too. She was beautiful. She was strikingly beautiful, _familiar_. He sniffed, and just managed not to take a sizeable step back.

It was a damn struggle not to fucking turn tail and get the hell _out_ , but he managed to stay stuck exactly where he was. The magic helped to pin him to the spot. She was watching him curiously, and he saw her eyes dawn with recognition.

She didn’t come any closer.

The two young Betas pulled apart, both puffy-eyed now, and Isaac looked over his shoulder, remembering Derek again.

“C’mere,” he called out quietly. It took every inch of his strength to step closer, to stay within the acceptable of bubble of almost touching that would keep the both of them calm.

“Did you get the vision too?” Scott asked, looking over the both of them. He supposed they all looked like shit.

“Yeah. That was the weirdest thing I’ve ever felt. The scariest thing … “ he trailed off, and Scott led him over to the well-worn sofa in the corner, where they’d clearly set up camp.

Allison kept her distance.

Derek sat as far away from her as he could, on Isaac’s other side. He could feel his claws wanting to come out, the stress playing havoc with his control, so he laid one hand under his thighs, and the other next to Isaac’s, seeking out his warmth.

“They said he got stabbed?” Derek asked quietly, and Scott’s eyes flicked to him. For never having spoken before, he was friendly enough.

“Yeah. The guy he was going to see. I don’t understand what happened. All they told me was he had a stab wound, and he was unconscious when he came in, and – “ Scott’s voice choked up and off, and Allison moved in, running her fingers through his hair.

Derek flinched.

“He’ll be alright,” she murmured to Scott, and Isaac leaned in on instinct, wanting the comfort from the false platitudes Derek certainly wasn’t going to give.

“I’m going for a walk,” he said shortly, and stood before he flipped out. Argent. There was a fucking _Argent_ here, right here, and he didn’t know what to do. Stiles’ magic was still churning inside him, and if he didn’t get away from her, he was going to lunge.

He heard Isaac call out after him, but ignored it for once, keeping his stride even and purposeful, walking _away_.

He got as far as the end of the hall, out of their sight, before his knees gave out and he sank to the floor, leaning against the wall, head in his hands. He must have been there a while, because eventually a doctor passed by, an older man, human.

He dropped to a squat in front of Derek, and the smell of concern wafting off him reached Derek’s nose easily.

“Son? You OK there?” he asked. His voice was calm and professional, and it was clear he’d done this a hundred times over. This _was_ ICU. People probably died in here all the time, and there had to be crying relatives in the hallways.

Lifting his head, Derek met the man’s eyes, and nodded.

“You need someone to come pick you up? You can use a phone at the nurses’ station,” the doctor pressed, and Derek felt his chest tighten and stitch itself back together. He was being ridiculous.

“No,” he answered, his voice coming out all scratchy until he cleared it. “I’m OK. Thank you.” He meant that, too.

“As long as you’re sure,” the man said, straightening up and letting him be.

Derek rubbed his face hard with both hands, got a grip on himself, and checked his watch. He’d been sat here for half an hour. Time to go back. Isaac needed him. Stiles needed him.

When he returned, sheepish, to the little waiting area, Isaac was sitting with his eyes closed slumped against Scott’s shoulder. Scott was watching the door to surgery avidly, though Derek could tell he was tired. Allison was nowhere to be seen.

“Hey, man,” Scott said tiredly, barely looking at him, eyes back on the door within seconds. “You OK?”

“Yeah,” Derek answered simply, sitting down beside him and joining him in the gaze at the door. Isaac hadn’t moved. He looked almost asleep.

“About Alli,” Scott started. Allison. Derek remembered now. Kate’s niece. “She said she was the one freaking you out, so she went to go get us coffee. I don’t know what’s up with you guys, but she’s my girlfriend,” he continued firmly. “And if you hurt her, I’ll hurt you.”

“You hurt Derek, I’ll make you pay,” Isaac piped up quietly, still not opening his eyes. Derek smothered a smirk. He also smothered the urge to tell Scott he should rip his girlfriend’s throat out.

“Stiles is hurt enough for all of us. If Derek wanted to take a bite out of me, I can defend myself,” came a sharp voice from behind them, and Allison turned the corner holding a cardboard tray of steaming coffee. “Not that I want anyone to get hurt. I’ll keep my distance, if you keep yours,” she added to Derek.

Her voice stayed level and she met his eyes. She wasn’t scared.

He couldn’t bring himself to speak, but he nodded, holding the eye contact until she looked away.

She handed out their coffee, and Derek only took his because he didn’t want to cause an argument. He was stressed, burned out, and too worried about Stiles in there to care about much else at the moment.

Hours passed. 5 of them. He only knew how many because he painstakingly counted how long they were waiting. Isaac fell asleep with his head in Scott’s lap around hour three, and Allison curled up against Scott’s side, her hand falling limp in Isaac’s hair as she too succumbed to sleep.

Derek was too on guard to sleep. Not around Allison Argent. He focused instead on not wrenching the girl away from his Beta.

At the beginning of hour six, Derek was trying not to lose hope. The spark of magic was still inside him, burning, and he had to assume it was there in the others, too. He clung to the notion that if Stiles had died, that magic would snuff out.

He didn’t know whether that was _true_ or not.

When all three of them were asleep in an uncomfortable looking pile, Derek was sat waiting. He would have slept if he could. It wasn’t that he was more worried, he didn’t think. Scott looked the most worried of all of them, and rightly so. Scott was the best friend. Scott had cried a good long while.

So instead of racing forward like he wanted to when the doctor emerged, bloodied and tired looking in her scrubs from the operating theatre, he nudged Scott with his foot, and watched him wake, blearily identifying the doctor and jumping up, leaving Isaac and Allison to crash awake together.

“Is he OK?” Scott asked, rubbing his eyes and bounding toward the doctor.

“We’ve stopped the bleeding, and stitched him up, for now,” the woman answered. She looked exhausted. “But he’ll need to stay in ICU for a few days. It was very close. He’s lucky he got here when he did.”

Derek took that to mean he was going to be OK. He let out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding, and looked over to Isaac, who was blinking away tears. Scott wasn’t trying to get rid of his, choking out thank yous between his sobs.

“When can we see him?” Derek asked, raising his voice over the sound of Scott’s crying.

“He’s still under,” the doctor warned. “He probably won’t wake up til tomorrow morning. But … if you’re very quiet, and don’t make a fuss, you can go on in. Two at a time, please. Don’t give the nurses a reason to throw you out.”

She looked a little glad to be relieved of her duties as she headed back into the theatre, presumably to clean up, and Derek made a mental note to thank her if he could ever find her again.

He stood, laid a hand on Scott’s shoulder and spoke quietly, the way he always did with Isaac.

“You go in first. We’ll wait here for you.”

Scott didn’t waste time, finding a nurse to tell him which room, and heading right in. Derek tried not to listen in, tried to give the man privacy, but the walls were thin, and he couldn’t help but hear Scott’s sniffles and murmured words of concern. Stiles must really have been out cold, because no reply came.

Isaac had forgotten all about the public boundaries they set, because he moved to Derek and scented him blatantly, collapsing in his lap and breathing into his neck. Derek wanted to say no, not in front of the Argent, but he let it happen anyway, letting his own sweet relief course through his veins slowly like an antidote.

“Told you he’d be fine,” Isaac muttered after a long minute, and Derek barked out a laugh, shaking his head.

“How could I have doubted you?” he replied dryly. “Go wash your face, you look like shit,” he added. Isaac shoved him hard, but did as he was told, heading off to finding a bathroom somewhere. Derek hadn’t cried, his face wasn’t red and puffy, but he felt as tired as if he had been.

He was left sitting with Allison in awkward silence, well away from each other. She looked tired, too.

“I’m sorry about your family,” she blurted out after a long silent few minutes. Now, she looked a little scared.

Derek, despite himself, turned his body to stare at her, incredulous. He felt anger rise up, and his eyes were on the border of flashing. He suppressed it.

“I mean, I know I’ve got no right to say it,” she blundered on. Now she smelled scared. “I know you’re not going to believe it coming from me, but I _am_ sorry. I didn’t have anything to do with that. I thought it was disgusting.”

There was no skip in her heartbeat. She was either telling the truth, or had learned to disguise it. He was banking on the latter.

“Stop talking to me and we’ll be fine,” he said shortly. She narrowed her eyes, but fell silent anyway. Good.

Scott came back out to them after twenty minutes or so, looking exhausted, but happier than he had before.

“The magic’s gone,” he informed them, stretching and cracking his joints. “I think he took it back.”

After promising Scott that he’d stay while the other wolf went home for a shower and a change of clothes, Derek felt a weight lift off his chest. Scott had taken the girl with him. Isaac was still in the bathroom, probably trying to come to terms with his control again.

He hesitated, before he headed into the room himself, slipping in quietly.

The room smelled overwhelmingly like medicine. It was clinical and sterile and tasted on his tongue the same way the dentist’s thumb did when he stuck it in your mouth, all rubbery and chalky.

Stiles was hooked up to about three different machines, all beeping steadily. Derek wasn’t sure what most of them were doing, but the human’s chest was rising and falling, so he could accept it all at face value.

Taking a seat in the chair beside the bed, he sat, at a loss for what to do. He couldn’t sit here and hold the kid’s hand like Scott would have. He didn’t feel any tears on their way, and they would have been strange and out of place, anyway. He wasn’t close like Scott, or even Isaac.

He took a breath, though, and watched for a little while, watched Stiles breathe evenly. Eventually, when he could still feel the magic within him, and he wanted it _out_ now, thank you, he reached out tentatively and brushed his fingertips over Stiles’ wrist.

With a jolt, he could feel the surge of it _drag_ up and out of him, a burning sensation up his arm and moved through his fingers back into Stiles. With it, the human’s cheeks seemed to pink up a little more, so he looked less like a corpse.

The door cracked open a little, and Derek took his hand back quickly. It was only Isaac.

“Hey. Come here,” Derek said softly, jerking his head toward the bed. “You look better.”

“I feel it. _He_ looks better,” the man answered, coming to hover by the edge of the bed. Derek took his hand and placed it over Stiles’, watching as the magic got sucked out of Isaac, too.

“Woah,” Isaac breathed. “That was intense.”

They sat quietly together with him after that, until Scott returned, and they vacated the room for him.

Derek hadn’t wanted to go home, but it made no sense to wait around when Scott was there, and he could recognise that he and Isaac both needed a shower, clean clothes, and something to eat. Isaac had been even more reluctant to leave, but they’d dragged themselves out.

Allison’s presence made it easier.

Isaac had looked, wide-eyed at Derek, when they stepped out into the pale sun, and the Camaro was nowhere to be seen.

“Not a fucking word,” Derek said, and Isaac had burst out laughing.

They got a cab home. Isaac laughed the whole way.

* * *

_“Where’s my son?”_

John had burst through the doors, shouted at several nurses, and made a hell of a scene before Allison had got him to calm down and listen. Now, he’d hugged Scott tight, thanked Allison, and was sitting by Stiles’ bedside, holding his hand tightly.

Derek had taken a second to put it together when he peered through the window and seen a middle aged man sitting with Stiles. (He was sleep-deprived, cut him a little slack).

“That’s Stiles’ Dad,” Scott had told him anyway. “He said he got the vision thing too and flew right here. We haven’t seen him in ages.”

Even if Derek hadn’t worked out who the man was, he would have eventually. The sheer amount of _love_ coming from him meant he could only have been a parent.

Two hours after John had arrived, Stiles woke up.

Scott fought his way inside, and Derek could hear them crying again. It was much nicer to hear Stiles’ voice again. He waited a few hours for Stiles to greet them, and have another nap, before he went to go visit himself.

The kid was awake, fiddling with his remote, and perked up when Derek stepped through the door.

“Hi, man!” he said happily, wincing as he moved too quickly to sit up. “Fuck. Ow.”

Derek snorted, but took his seat anyway, looking Stiles over.

“You look like you’re feeling better,” he said. It felt awkward, all of a sudden. He wasn’t so sure now he wanted Stiles to know how out of their mind crazy with panic they’d all been. Him included.

“Yeah, well, I think everyone looks better with their guts _inside_ their bellies,” he replied. The joke fell flat, and it sat between them, heavy.

“We were – everyone, was worried. They’re glad you pulled through,” Derek said after a moment, clearing his throat and avoiding Stiles’ eyes.

“I, um. I know my magic kind of went mental,” Stiles countered, and when Derek looked up, he looked remarkably guilty. “I didn’t know it would do that. I didn’t even know I _could_ do that. I’m really sorry, Derek.”

“Don’t be stupid,” Derek brushed off firmly. “It might have helped save your life. You don’t apologise for that.”

“They said the receptionist heard me scream and called an ambulance. And the cops,” Stiles admitted quietly. “She probably saved my life. I hope she’s alright.”

“We can find out. Just focus on healing,” Derek replied, trying to shake away the image of Stiles bleeding out in his mind. “I … was pretty worried. About you. Your magic gave us this vision of you, and you looked pretty fucked up. I’m sorry about everything I said. How much of an asshole I was.”

Stiles blinked, stared at him for a long minute, and broke out into a wide grin, grabbing his hand with his own and holding on tight.

“That’s cool, dude. It’s OK, really. Half of what you said was right. And … I mean, I thought I was gonna die, back there. Really did. I wasn’t holding any grudges,” he answered, fingers curling tight around Derek’s palm and refusing to let go. “I didn’t even know who my magic was going to. I thought it was just abandoning its host or whatever.”

“I’ve read about it. Only powerful witches can do it, and only when they’re dying,” Derek explained, holding onto Stiles’ hand. “Your magic acts on your instinct, and calls on your most important people for help. The ones who _can_ actually help you. It recognised werewolf as powerful, I guess.”

“Yeah, or it went to the people I care about,” Stiles argued. “Though, that doesn’t explain why it went to _you_.” Derek only had to take a glance at the cheeky grin that accompanied it to know Stiles was teasing.

“Whatever it was, I’m glad it did. Damn, it was one hell of a power surge, though. Why didn’t you say you were that powerful?” Derek asked, fighting down the warm feeling in his gut from Stiles’ words.

“I didn’t think I _was_ ,” Stiles answered. He still hadn’t let go of Derek’s hand. “I don’t do big stuff like that. I practise the small stuff until it’s perfect. I’ve never done something as big as that.”

He paused, his face falling, and for a second, Derek thought something was terribly wrong.

“I didn’t miss Christmas, did I?” Stiles asked, looking utterly dismayed at the thought. Derek laughed, once, and then found he couldn’t stop, the sound reverberating around the room.

“No,” he answered through spluttering laughs. “You didn’t miss Christmas. It’s a week away, don’t worry.”

“Thank god,” Stiles sighed, leaning back against his pillows and smiling over at Derek. “I love Christmas.”

Before he knew what he was doing, too overcome with the warmth of being one of Stiles’ chosen few, and the relief that he was awake and talking and joking, Derek was speaking.

“Do you want to come spend it with me?” he asked. The words had left him before he could manage to be horrified about them. “Maybe not Christmas day, but we have a whole weekend of family stuff. You could come for lunch the day after.”

Stiles was looking at him as if he’d grown a second head. He was ready to take it all back when Stiles just fucking stayed _quiet_ , but eventually, thankfully, he spoke.

“ _Yes_ , dude, of course I’d like to. Thank you. That sounds amazing,” he answered, and bless him, he really looked like he meant that. “Provided I get out of here in time, you know.”

Derek was out the door, his hand warm from Stiles’, and sipping at the coffee Scott had brought him before he realised that he’d just offered to take Stiles home. To meet his family. Which meant it was time to take Isaac, too.

Fuck.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This may be the quickest I've ever updated. I astounded myself, guys. Hope you like it.


	13. Chapter 13

Stiles had never bought into the whole near death life enlightening experience shit. He was enough of an adrenaline junkie to consider those courses that purported to bring you closer to God by jumping out of an airplane, but he was more in that for the jump, not communion with his maker.

After passing out in that office, the knife still stuck in his belly, and the total loss of his magic, having it torn away from him, he wasn’t so sure that those crackpots had it all wrong. He’d really believed he was going to die. To _die_.

His life hadn’t flashed before his eyes like everyone always said. No, there had barely been enough time to think of anything. Conversely, cruelly, it had felt like all the time in the world, like time had stopped, and he was going to be dying for hours and hours until the _end_ of time.

It was all still fuzzy, but the nurses had told him that was normal. He could remember being scared, remembering the knife plunging into him, but not too much after that. He remembered thinking how unfair it was, because he didn’t get to say goodbye to his Dad, or Scott. He’d never been in love, madly truly deeply love.

When he was left lying in his hospital bed, when everyone had either gone home, or for food, and he was alone, he felt guilty. He hadn’t thought about his Mom. That was just … unforgivable. He was dying, and he didn’t think about his Mom at all. He should have been happy to join her, if he really was dying, if there was a heaven. That’s what he should have thought about.

“I love you so much, kid, you know that?” his Dad had said fervently, gripping onto his hand. Stiles knew, but he cried and he nodded and agreed. He’d been so relieved to see his Dad the second he woke up. He might have been an adult now, a grown man, but he still needed his father.

It had been three days in hospital now, and they still came by every night to give him injections right into his stomach. They hurt like a bitch, and he winced away from them every time, despite knowing how important they were. Supposed to prevent infection of his incision, apparently.

‘Incision’. Fancy way to put being ripped open and sewn back together. He’d said that the first time the pretty young nurse had come to stick the needles into him, when he was a little loopy from the morphine, and she’d giggled and brushed back his hair like he was a child. Then stuck another needle into him. He liked her less after that.

Scott came to see him every day. He’d cried a lot, but when Stiles had told him to suck it up and shoved him like they were kids again, his visits became cheerier. He smiled more, and only grinned wider when Stiles started calling him Sunshine again.

The most surprising thing about Scott’s visits, though, was that they usually came with an addition. Allison Argent. Stiles knew who the Argents were. Everyone who knew about the supernatural did. They were a huge family, even just in North America. As far as Stiles knew, there were branches all over the world. Some more brutal than others.

The Americans sounded pretty fucking brutal.

When Scott had come to see him the second day, he’d walked in, hand in hand with one of the prettiest girls Stiles had ever seen. Her smile was bright enough to match Scott’s, and that was saying something.

“Hey, man. So … this is Allison,” Scott had started nervously. Stiles made a point of sitting up, even if it hurt _like hell_. From the way Scott gravitated around her every move, she was important. With a capital I.

“Hi,” he’d said, smiling weakly. “Sorry Scott chose _now_ to introduce us, when I look like I’ve just been through major freaking surgery,” he added, shooting the wolf a sharp glance.

“Hey, I had reasons!” Scott interjected, looking crestfallen. Stiles waited for more explanation, but none came. Not from Scott, at least.

“We’ve been seeing each other for about six months,” Allison explained nervously, sitting on the edge of the chair beside his bed. “We didn’t tell anyone because, well. It’s complicated. It wouldn’t be a very good idea if anyone found out.”

At that point, Stiles had been too intrigued to be pissed that he’d been left out of the loop.

“Alli has kind of a crazy family,” Scott said slowly, glancing quickly at her like he was asking for permission to continue.

“I’m an Argent,” she said bluntly. Blunt enough that Stiles could tell she was self-conscious about it.

“An … Argent? Like – _hunter_ Argent? Like, you kill werewolves, Argent? Scott, what the fuck?” Stiles had exclaimed. He didn’t miss the way Allison’s face fell, then hardened.

“Yes, that Argent,” she said. There was no disguising the hurt in her voice, but she did a good job still looking pretty fed up. “Look, I can’t choose my family. That’s what I grew up in. I never knew any different. They trained me up, sure, but it doesn’t mean I agree with the killing.”

“She’s never hurt me,” Scott said quickly. “We met at the shooting range, and she was this amazing shot, and we got talking, and – she’s not dangerous to us, Stiles,” he added, looking pretty damn sincere.

Stiles stayed quiet for a moment or two, processing everything he knew about Argents. They were brutal hunters. They’d been involved somehow with the death of the Hales, and Talia Hale never let anyone talk about them in the office. Not unless it was business related, but the Argents were smart, rich, and well-connected enough to never let themselves be caught in dirty dealings.

And now Scott was dating one of them. Allison was old enough to be lethal by now. Maybe she wasn’t as experienced as some of the older members, but he was willing to bet she’d done some bad shit. He’d clearly paused too long, though, because Scott looked angry, and Allison was looking into her lap.

“Do you still talk to them?” he asked finally, and she looked up.

“Yes,” she admitted. “They’re my family, I still love them. I just don’t agree with everything they do. And … it’s hard, trying to break away from it. But I am trying. I want to change their minds about their methods. Wolves don’t need murdering. But you monitor them the same way we do. All we should be doing as hunters is making sure they don’t get hurt anyone. Exactly the same thing you do.”

She sounded pretty sure of herself, and her eyes shone as she spoke. Stiles’ eyes flicked back to Scott for a quick second, and he looked so completely, madly, in love, staring at the girl like she was the most precious thing on Earth, that he couldn’t bring himself to ask more questions. Not right now.

Didn’t mean he totally trusted her, though.

He was tempted to be stubborn the way he usually was, to give in to everything he knew about Argents, and condemn her. And then he remembered where he was, that he’d nearly died, that he was lucky to be sitting here with Scott and his apparently killer girlfriend. He was lucky to be alive. He didn’t want to live hating people.

“OK,” he said after a long moment. “Nice to meet you, Allison. Just know that if you do ever hurt Sunshine, I’ll kill you.”

Far from looking threatened or offended, Allison beamed, and nodded.

“I won’t, believe me. I love him. And I’m glad to finally meet you. Scott’s been so upset about keeping this secret, and – I guess I was just scared about what would happen if my family found out,” she explained. 

“Yeah, but the second she heard you were in trouble, she was on her way to come help,” Scott added proudly.

Stiles managed to refrain from bombarding her with too many hunting-related questions the rest of the time she stayed, but he did ask for their whole romantic history and scolded Scott more than once for keeping it from him.

That had been a mostly pleasant visit. He was happy to talk to them, thankful that Scott was always there with him, and the more he spoke with Allison, the more he liked her, despite his reservations, which still lingered.

He’d had a lot more visits than that one, though. It was probably a blessing, since he didn’t have too much time to think about what had happened, to freak himself out thinking about it, but he felt more popular than he’d ever been pre-stabbing.

Talia Hale had come to see him the second day he was in hospital, and that was an awkward as fuck visit. She’d brought him flowers, which was sweet, but she looked so guilty the whole time that he felt all skin-crawly about it.

“I really had no idea that he was so unstable, Mr. Stilinski, and I can’t apologise enough,” she’d said. She felt more like his boss than a friend, but that was OK, because she _was_ his boss.

“It’s fine, really, Director Hale,” he’d replied, careful to stay formal. “I don’t think anyone could have known what was going to happen. It’s not like I blame you. I’m not going to sue, I swear,” he joked, and she actually smiled. Her smile looked a lot like Derek’s.

He’d been kind of grateful when she left.

By far his favourite visit had been Derek’s. That was probably unfair, since he was glad to see everyone, especially his Dad, but Derek’s had just been such a fucking _surprise_.

When he’d woken, his magic back inside him where it belonged, he realised what it had done. That, and Scott had filled in the blanks. He’d been racking his brains to work out _why_ it went to who it did. Scott and his Dad, they made sense. They were the two people he loved most in the world. Of course his magic would seek them out.

And yeah, he liked Isaac a lot. They were fast friends, even if he was learning that the young wolf was just as much of a smartass as him, and sometimes they snarked entirely too much at each other. They were still _friends_.

Derek, though. He wasn’t sure what Derek was. He’d like to think they were friends. They talked, and hung out a little bit, mostly out of necessity. They shared secrets, sure, but none disclosed willingly. He hadn’t even been completely sure Derek liked him. Apparently, yeah. He did.

Spending _Christmas_ with him. He was pretty sure that Derek Hale had never invited anyone to spend Christmas with them, and it hadn’t seemed like a pity invitation. Not that Stiles could sniff out emotions like the wolves could, but the Alpha had seemed _worried_ about him. Genuinely worried, like everyone else was.

It was a nice feeling, having people care about him. Having Derek care about him.

Now if he could just get out of the hospital, which he was thoroughly sick of, he might be alright.

* * *

Peter Hale prided himself on his plans. Schemes, rather. His mind savoured them. They were like puzzles for him to engross himself in, how he could achieve his endgame with the least amount of damage to his own person.

When he’d been younger, all that had consisted of was the occasional lie about where he was that night, planting things in his sister’s pockets and watching her cop the blame for it. They were thrills, little thrills that made him feel _powerful_. And more than anything, he craved feeling powerful. He was never going to be Alpha, that much was clear in their family’s hierarchy. Talia was the eldest, she’d inherit the power.

It wasn’t fair, and he didn’t accept it.

Since his late teens, he’d come to terms with the fact that no one was going to just hand him the power he so desperately wanted. He’d understood that if he wanted it, he was going to have to take it. And so began _the plan_.

A great many people had contributed to the plan, without even knowing. The thing was, though, that the plan was forced to change. He’d wanted to be Alpha of the Hale Pack. Large and powerful and most illustrious in all of North America, and he could be at its head.

Now, all that was left were splinters. There was hardly anything left to rule by the time Derek was done.

How he _loathed_ his nephew. The pup had been alright when he was just that, a pup. He’d been a quiet child, but that had suited Peter. They’d been friends in Derek’s early life, and grown apart when the kid began to grow a mind of his own.

And then it had all come tumbling down, all thanks to Derek. Derek and his inability to tell a lie from the truth. Derek, who trusted far too easily. Derek, who had fallen in love with a hunter and let his emotions rule him. Derek, who had destroyed their family. Derek, who Talia _shared her power with_.

He mourned them. He did. Sometimes he was mourning the wolves that would have made him powerful, but he mourned his family, too. The ones he’d grown up with, and watched grow. Now, there were three Hales left in all the world. Three, and him. And he still wasn’t Alpha.

The plan had ruled Peter’s adult life, and just because it had fallen apart, didn’t mean he couldn’t put it back together again. So he did. He glued it back into shape, gave it a new one. He’d still be Alpha. He’d still take that power from his sister, who took it for granted. He’d make his own pack. He’d rebuild the Hale Pack under his guidance.

Of course, he could have just killed Talia and absorbed her power. Easily. It might have been a fight, but he was certain he’d win, purely because he was _willing_ to kill family. Talia wouldn’t be. She loved him. But then the two left would never bend to him. He needed them to think he’d inherited the power fairly. Justly. Naturally. Not by murder. Not by his hand, anyway.

Laura had been – regrettable. She was supposed to die. He’d meant to slice her clean in half and make it look like a hunter attack. She was a pawn, really, a necessary death to start a war with the Argents that would wipe out his dear sister.

She’d lived, and his trust had been forever fractured. She wouldn’t even be in the same room with him now. She stank of terror whenever he was around. Terror and fury. Miraculously, he’d managed to make Talia believe him. Things got back on track.

And then. There was Stiles.

Beautiful, clever, _powerful_ Stiles. He’d first caught scent of the boy when he’d joined their department, years ago. Almost two years now. He doubted any of them had seen his sheer, raw potential. He was hyperactive and arrogant and a chaotic mess, yes, but he thrummed with power. Peter wanted to devour him.

Instead, he planned. It had taken a good long time for an opportunity to arise, and finally it was there. He’d dropped a few subtle hints, and Stiles had been assigned to his side. Right where he belonged. Things were slotting into place, he was worming his way in, and soon enough, Stiles would be his creature. His partner.

If his meddlesome little nephew would just leave him _alone_ , he wouldn’t have had to take such drastic measures. He wouldn’t have had to try to have Stiles kicked back into active field duty. They were nosing around too much, getting far too deep, and much as he wanted the human right there with him, he couldn’t risk being exposed.

He _hadn’t_ expected it all to go to hell. He’d underestimated the power of Matthew’s love for him. A mistake he wouldn’t make again. Love was dangerous, more dangerous than anything else he’d encountered. And it had fucked things up to no end.

The moment he’d heard about it, his wolf had gone wild and frenzied within him, furious and vindictive. And worried, desperately worried, for Stiles. His Stiles, his precious human. Stiles belonged to _him_. They were a perfect match. Both powerful and ambitious. Together, they’d create a strong, glorious pack.

If he lived.

Concerned as he was, he let the rational side of him fight and win out, and waited a good day or so before he went to the hospital, waiting in the parking lot to ensure that none of his family would be there. He’d charmed one of the ICU nurses to let him in outside of visiting hours, so he’d have a little privacy. A little leeway.

Stiles had been asleep when he arrived, at a little past eleven at night. The ward was quiet and dimmed, and he’d had no trouble slipping into the room silently, taking his seat in the chair he knew all the others must have. He resented them. This was his place, not theirs. Stiles was his human, not theirs.

“Wake up, Stiles,” he’d murmured, manipulating the timbre of his voice to hit exactly the right tone he knew would rouse the human. He was right, it had, and Stiles had blinked blearily at him before he shot upright, crying out from the pain of doing so.

“Woah,” he said gently. “Calm down, it’s just me.” Stiles didn’t look any more reassured by that. He reached out a hand and placed it over Stiles’, seeping out his pain.

“You don’t have to do that,” Stiles said, looking a little uncomfortable. He shifted his hand away and tucked it into his side, wincing. “What are you doing here?”

Peter could tell he was unwelcome. He felt anger rise, but quelled it just as quickly. It wouldn’t help to get angry now, even if Derek had been poisoning the boy’s mind against him. He’d win him over. Just might take some time.

“You got stabbed,” Peter replied dryly. “I thought it prudent to check on you, seeing as you’re my partner.” Lover, mate, conspirator.

“Yeah, well. It wasn’t fun, but hey, I’m still here,” Stiles joked weakly. Peter didn’t like his nonchalance. He’d almost died. His power had almost been snuffed out. He ought to have taken it more seriously.

“I’m not very pleased, I hope you know,” he said, barely needing to try to turn his mouth down into a grimace. “That never should have happened. He’s never been violent before.” That much was true, at least. Matthew had been a lover, not a fighter. Just not _his_ lover.

Stiles’ brow furrowed, and for a moment, he looked more interested in Peter’s presence.

“What _was_ he like with you? You never told me, and I thought it was just some, you know, throw the new guy in the deep end thing. He seemed to really hate supernatural stuff,” he said, and a faint scent of fear hit the air. That wouldn’t do. When Stiles had accepted his own power and his place, he’d never be scared again.

“Well, he didn’t take to it very well, but I never suspected he’d be aggressive about it. He must have seen you as a weaker threat than me,” Peter answered, though he knew the true reason. As for weaker, well. Stiles certainly wasn’t that.

“I don’t know. It felt personal,” Stiles muttered, and he’d definitely darkened over that one. “He kept talking about – _me_. He knew what _I’d_ been doing. I don’t know what I did to him, but …” he trailed off, and his eyes stared down into his lap, clearly floating back to the confrontation.

“You didn’t do anything. I’m sure all it was, was the man’s own fear and hatred. You just happened to be there. Who knows, he might have done the same to me in a week or two. He was obviously at breaking point,” Peter reasoned.

Stiles didn’t seem very happy with the explanation, but he nodded anyway, staring at the wall right in front of him. The one thing that made this little encounter worth sitting through was the almost certain knowledge that the kid wouldn’t have done this with his masses of loved ones. He wouldn’t want to worry them. Peter, he didn’t much care for either way.

“Do you think Talia’s going to make me go back?” he asked finally. His voice was small, and weak. It was all weak. Peter wanted to shake him by the goddamn shoulders, to plunge a hand inside him and pull out the power, show him that he had nothing to fear, that _he_ was the one people should fear.

He didn’t. He took the opportunity, and softened. He thought about reaching out again and taking the boy’s hand, but that would have been a bit much for right now.

“I don’t think she will if you ask her not to,” he answered pointedly. His sister would definitely take him off the detail anyway, her guilt would be too much to keep him there, but Stiles didn’t know that. “And I can put in a good word for you. She tends to listen to me.”

Stiles’ eyes finally came back to him, flicking away from the wall to meet his own.

“Yeah? She won’t just fire me? Because this job is kind of a punishment for me fucking up,” Stiles said. “I mean – I can keep doing it, but … actually, I don’t know if I can. This was fucked up. I’ve never been stabbed before.”

“I should hope not,” Peter replied. “I’m certain she won’t fire you. Ask her to take you off this one. She’ll probably put you back on desk duty, and you might be getting people’s coffee for a while, but you won’t be in stabbing vicinity anymore.”

Far from looking dejected at this prospect like he’d seen the kid be before, when he’d first started this, he looked relieved. He must have been more shaken up by this than he’d thought. Than anyone had thought.

“Yeah. Maybe I will,” he murmured, faraway and off in his own head, before he looked up again. “Thanks. You know. For showing up, I guess, and everything.” He sounded more sincere about this one than he had when Peter had first shown up. Progress.

“Not a problem. I don’t know what you think of me, but I _was_ worried,” he answered, standing and brushing off his suit. “We might not be working together anymore, but I still think you’ve got more potential than they give you credit for in the office.”

When he left, he could smell Stiles’ pride on the air, no small thing, especially when his own was so large, but also confusion, and a slight lilt of regret.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one's a little shorter, but it's more of an insight into the other characters than a big plot-mover. Enjoy.


	14. Chapter 14

By the time Stiles got out of hospital, he was well and truly sick of being jabbed with needles, woken up in the middle of the night for his vitals to be taken, and being in so much pain he could barely sit up. He’d been stuck there for almost a week, with the visits growing less frequent from everyone but his Dad, who had nowhere else to be.

Fortunately, after many reminders and much nagging on his part, they’d decided to let him out in time for Christmas. The fact that now he could walk, if a little unsteadily and with no small amount of twingey pain, probably helped too.

He knew that if he hadn’t been stabbed and almost died, he would have done things a lot fancier. He always decorated their apartment and made an attempt at Christmas dinner for him and Scott, and at the very least, had carols on a loop on his iPod.

That said, it had been a few years since he’d had enough money to spend Christmas with his Dad (and to be honest, the motivation, which made him feel _really_ shitty), and just being with him was kind of better than anything he could have set up.

It was a subdued Christmas, all things considered, especially some of the Christmases Stiles had put together in previous years, with Melissa and Scott and him and his Dad back in Beacon Hills. Stiles was still on some pain medication, and the other two men were very careful around him.

“You sure you’re feeling OK, Stiles?” Scott had asked when Stiles winced very slightly, leaning across the table to get the mashed potato.

“ _Yes_ , for the last time, Scott, I’m fine. I just wanna stop being asked that. I got stabbed, I don’t have some terminal debilitating condition,” he groaned. It had been a long while since his Mom passed until he could joke about terminal debilitating conditions, and he could still see his Dad’s expression twitch a little. He wouldn’t do that again, then.

“OK, OK, I’m just making sure,” Scott huffed, and pushed the potatoes closer to him with the tip of his finger anyway. “You got stabbed, and you’re acting like it’s not serious and scary.”

Stiles rolled his eyes, but acknowledged that Scott was right anyway. It was serious, and scary, and he’d had nightmares every night since it happened. Not that he shared that with anyone. He didn’t need them worrying or making a bigger fuss than they already were.

“Any idea when you’ll be going to work, kid?” his Dad asked, and when Stiles looked up, the man had his concerned face on. Stiles knew that face well; almost as well as the exasperated face he wore nearly as often. He knew the man understood about his job. He was a cop’s kid, going into police work, of a kind. He knew that gut-wrenching feeling of not knowing if this would be the night his Dad didn’t come home.

“Uh, I don’t know,” he answered, shovelling a mouthful of food in to buy himself a little time to formulate an answer. “When they let me go back, I guess,” he added, voice muffled through the food. John pulled a face at him, and Stiles gave him a beam full of gravy and mashed potatoes.

“Are you sure you shouldn’t take some more time off? I’m sure your boss wouldn’t mind granting you personal leave. If it’s money you’re worried about, I can help out,” he countered, and Stiles could practically feel Scott getting ready to say no. Scott had a lot of pride, much like Stiles.

“Dad. I’m cool. Really. What am I going to do if I take leave? Sit around here and think about what happened? That doesn’t sound healthy by anyone’s definition. I’d rather go to work. And … you know, I might not be doing the same shit I was doing before,” he added, voice trailing off.

“What do you mean?” Scott said immediately. “You didn’t get demoted, did you, because that’s not fair! You can’t help what some nutjob does to you.”

His outrage was somewhat touching, but Stiles shook his head and rolled his eyes anyway.

“No, I didn’t get demoted. But – I don’t know. I don’t really like the idea of going back to … look, it’s just not an awesome idea for me,” he snapped. He knew he was getting defensive over nothing, that Scott and his Dad would never judge him for not wanting to return, but the irrational part of his brain feared it anyway.

“Calm down,” Scott snapped back. The great thing about having Scott as a best friend, was that he always knew when to dish back out exactly what Stiles gave. “It’s fine. If you don’t wanna go back to it, you could ask Talia for … something else to do,” he added, but the way his voice paused over the suggestion made Stiles uneasy.

“Something else like what?” he challenged. Scott squirmed in his seat, never able to lie, not to Stiles, and John cleared his throat, making both boys look up.

“Be nice, Stiles,” he warned, exactly the same tone he used when Stiles was a little boy. “Do you think there’s something else for you to do there? Because this might be an – opportunity, to find another line of work,” he said carefully.

Stiles’ jaw set, and the only reason he didn’t get up and storm away from the table was that his gut would hurt if he did.

“I don’t want another job,” he said firmly, through gritted teeth. “I just – don’t think I can go back to doing what I was doing when someone fucking _stabbed_ me.”

He knew he was being unfair, that he was ruining Christmas dinner, with the people he loved most in the world, but they were skimming over a touchy subject, and even as he was trying his hardest not to be such a twitchy, defensive ass, he didn’t want to deal with it.

“No one’s saying you have to!” Scott argued. “But maybe your Dad’s right. You could take a sabbatical type thing. Work out what to do next.”

It felt like they were ganging up on him, and he didn’t do so well with being ganged up on. He glared hard, at the both of them, and set down his knife and fork.

“Leave me alone about it,” he demanded. “Or we’re going to fight, and I don’t want to fight. It’s Christmas. I nearly died. I just want to have a nice afternoon.”

Either the reminder of his near-death, or the tone he was using made both men back down. Stiles could tell they wanted to say more, and would probably plot about it when he’d gone to bed.

“Alright,” John sighed. “It’s your life. Your choice.”

“Damn right,” Stiles bit back, before letting out a heavy sigh. “I’m sorry. I just don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to _think_ about it.”

The night was quiet from there on in, and though Stiles still enjoyed himself, he knew it could have gone smoother if he’d just kept his mouth shut. When they’d finally cleared the table, and his Dad went back to his hotel room, Stiles hugged him extra tight, and for a few moments longer than he usually did.

“Love you, Dad,” he said quietly. “M’glad you’re here.”

Scott seemed apologetic, mostly, and spent the rest of the night subtly trying to leech his pain away as his kind of silent sorry. Stiles didn’t stop him; his own apology.

When they’d sat through both The Nightmare before Christmas, Stiles’ choice, and Love Actually, Scott’s choice, they were back to being easy around each other, the argument having melted away. Scott stumbled off to bed, a little drunk from the copious amounts of egg nog they’d both consumed, and Stiles headed off himself.

When he actually got into bed, though, he couldn’t have been less tired. His mind was stuck on what Scott had said. Something else to do. What if there wasn’t anything else for him to do? What if he was already pushing it, and this was what Talia decided was enough to just cut ties with him?

What if his Dad was right, and he was going to have find another job? Jobs were hard enough to find for guys his age, let alone the kind of job that would keep Stiles happy. He might go insane if he was stuck making coffees or wiping down benches and mopping floors. He knew it was selfish and unrealistic of him, but he didn’t _want_ to be doing that menial, everyday kind of work. He liked the excitement. He liked helping people. He liked cultivating his magic and mingling with the supernatural.

He’d laid there for about half an hour, working himself up over the idea of not having his job, of having to look for a normal person job. And then beating himself up for looking down on normal people jobs. Finally, he swung himself very gingerly over the edge of the bed and grabbed his phone, swiping his way in.

When he reached the contact list, he went straight to ‘H’, and then hesitated, his thumb hovering. There were two there. Peter and Derek. And he had no idea which one he’d meant to text, when he picked up the phone. Peter had been the one to tell him Talia would let him stay. He’d been kind of reassuring about that. But he also still … unsettled him.

Derek might not understand, though. He might not even want to talk. It was pretty late, he might be asleep. He didn’t really deserve to hear Stiles’ panicky worrying about something that probably didn’t even matter to him.

His thumb touched down on Derek’s name, anyway.

_[Stiles Stilinski, 12.24am]_

_Am I going to lose my job? I can’t be a barista. I can’t make those little pictures in the chocolate foam. I’d be a dick and put the wrong name on the sides of cups. I’d get fired within the first week. That or go insane._

He was clutching his phone pretty tightly, and trying to imagine himself in an office, if he could ever find an office job. Staring at the same four walls every day. He was in the middle of a daydream about cubicle walls closing in on him when his phone pinged, and he jumped.

_[Derek Hale, 12.32am]_

_Why would you lose your job?_

Of course the guy wouldn’t indulge his little fantasies. But he’d replied. And that was enough, for now. He might have been asleep, since there was a pause there, but he’d chosen to text back rather than rolling over and going back to sleep.

_[Stiles Stilinski, 12.34am]_

_Because I’m too scared to go back to doing what your Mom wanted me to do. And if I ask not to do that anymore, she’s going to fire me. She doesn’t think I’m useful anywhere else._

His thumbs had moved of their own accord, really, answering that one. He hadn’t meant to say scared, nor had he meant to reveal his deeply hidden fear of not being useful.

_[Derek Hale, 12.40am]_

_She won’t fire you for being honest. If you don’t want to do it anymore, it’s OK. You got hurt. It was dangerous. A whole lot of people would have quit outright._

That … was kind of true, he guessed. He’d known a deputy or two back home who’d gotten hurt in the field. One had been shot apprehending a guy who’d stolen _tampons_ of all things. Stiles’ favourite officer when he was little quit the force when she was run off the road by a group of psycho anti-government thugs. He hadn’t quit. Didn’t want to quit. He hadn’t thought about that.

_[Stiles Stilinski, 12.44am]_

_But she doesn’t want me to do the stuff Scott’s doing. She gave me this job because I fucked up. And I fucked up again. What else could I be doing?_

He’d been expecting to wait a little while for the next message, since Derek didn’t have as fast thumbs as he did, apparently, but the next one came through almost immediately.

_[Derek Hale, 12.44am]_

_It wasn’t your fault._

He was in the middle of formulating his reply, when another message whooshed through.

_[Derek Hale, 12.45am]_

_You got hurt doing exactly what you were asked to do. That doesn’t mean you fucked up. You fucked up the last one because you were doing what you were asked **not** to do. Mom won’t get rid of you. You could work with me. Do what I’m doing. _

The stubborn brat inside him scrunched up its face at that, because he’d never liked the look of sitting at a desk all day like Derek did. But … they were almost uncharacteristically kind words from the man who hadn’t even spoken two words in a row to him a few weeks ago.

_[Stiles Stilinski, 12.50am]_

_I don’t know anything about what you do. All I see you doing is paperwork. And science. Science paperwork._

Maybe that sounded a little rude, but Stiles _was_ a little rude. He couldn’t purge that entirely. Much as he was trying.

_[Derek Hale, 12.53am]_

_I do forensics. Some of it’s science paperwork. But I solve half the crap you and the rest of the agents bring in. You kill something, and I look at its blood. I’m the one who knows what you took down and how we should have handled it. I’m the reason no one gets hurt when they leave the office. I find out the right information for Deaton to cook you up all those cures and hexbags._

OK, so a lot rude. Ruder than he’d meant to be, and he’d definitely touched a nerve there. He tried to keep his temper under control, which really, was only fuelled by being so worried about what was going to happen to him next. He knew that. It didn’t make it any easier not to get pissed off.

_[Stiles Stikinski, 12.57am]_

_OK, OK. Sorry. It’s not like you talk to people about your work, I don’t know how I was supposed to know that. And – for the record, I could make all those things Deaton makes. I bet I could make a few of them better. He’s kind of a master, but an old-fashioned one._

Which was true. Deaton protected them with magic, he gave them certain charmed amulets and hexbags, different tokens, to keep them shielded from danger. Not that a lot of the wolves took them seriously. They preferred to rely on their own fangs and claws. Stiles, though, experimented with them in his spare time, when he was bored, and in all his tinkering, had found that mixing ingredients he knew the older man would never have done, worked a whole lot better.

_[Derek Hale, 12.59am]_

_So why don’t you?_

Stiles paused, and frowned down at the screen.

_[Stiles Stilinski, 1.00am]_

_Why don’t I what?_

This reply, too, came fairly quickly.

[ _Derek Hale, 1.02am]_

_Do what Deaton does. Do it better than he does. If you’re so sure you can, do it. Ask Mom. It’d keep you from butting into field missions, and you’d be helping._

That … hadn’t occurred to him. Sure, he could talk a lot of shit about doing these things. He liked to brag. But he didn’t often follow through. Not that he _couldn’t_. A lot of the time, he was bragging about things he really could do. It was just a matter of him taking it as, well, talking shit.

_[Stiles Stilinski, 1.05am]_

_That’s not a bad idea. I could do that. That would be useful._

He could feel himself getting tired now, some of the stress melting away. His pain medication might also have been kicking in. His eyes fluttered closed, and snapped open when the phone pinged again.

_[Derek Hale, 1.09am]_

_I just said that. Good to know you listen to **something**. Have you stopped crying about being a barista now? _

That made him laugh, and he thumbed out a reply, pulling the same face he would have done in the flesh.

_[Stiles Stilinski, 1.11am]_

_All tears have dried, thanks so much for your concern. (I wasn’t crying, I was freaking out. Distinct difference). Thanks. For making me not freak out. And listening to me ramble this late at night._

He was almost asleep by the time Derek replied, and jumped slightly when he felt the buzz of his phone in his hand.

_[Derek Hale, 1.20am]_

_It’s fine. I’ll see you tomorrow?_

It almost, almost sounded hopeful. Or maybe Stiles was just reading it as hopeful. It would have been nice, if Derek was looking forward to seeing him. And who knew, maybe he _was_.

_[Stiles Stilinski, 1.21am]_

_Yep, noon. Won’t be late. Going to sleep now. You should too. Get your beauty ‘z’s. Night, Derek._

No reply came, but even if one had, he wouldn’t have seen it. He was asleep moments after he sent the message through, finally relaxed enough to let his mind rest.

* * *

Christmas Day was Christmas in the Hale household. Before – everything, it had been a busy day, kids opening presents in every corner, his Dad in the kitchen making a huge lunch for his whole extended family. It had been noisy and manic and exhausting. He loved it. He missed it.

Now, Christmas Day consisted of spending the whole day at his Mom’s with her and Laura. They’d exchange presents, but it was never a very happy affair. They all remembered too much. They’d have dinner, but it was nothing like the feast they used to have.

The day _after_ Christmas had been his favourite, though. That day, was the day they always chose to celebrate Derek’s birthday. It was horribly embarrassing that he’d been born on Christmas Day. He detested all the jokes about being a ‘gift’. He liked to tell people that his mother being in labour for twenty-seven hours wasn’t kind of _gift_ he’d treasure. When he gave people that answer at 12 years old, it caused a few outraged gasps from his older aunts.

Now, he wished he could have them back to say stupid things about his birthday.

His family had realized right from the get go that it was unfair birthday for him. With so many kids excited about their own stash of Christmas presents, he got lost in the muddle. No one was going to pay much attention to him when they had their own spoils of the day.

The day after was _his_ day. Or had been. He didn’t care about celebrating anymore. Not really. He didn’t see the point. He was a grown man. He didn’t need a fuss made over him.

If there was a tiny part of him that missed waking up and knowing he’d have his favourite breakfast made, and a present and a smile from the people he loved, well. Didn’t matter.

Stiles was coming over today. His day. Even if no one said much about it, by his express command, it was still his day. Laura had murmured a happy birthday, the most he allowed, and his Mom had served up blueberry pancakes and ice-cream, against his wishes. He ate every bite.

Maybe more importantly today, though, was Isaac. This would be Isaac’s first Christmas with the Hales. It’d be his first official introduction to Talia and Laura. Long overdue, but it was going to happen.

Isaac was ecstatic. Nervous, he could tell, but happy that Derek had finally made the decision to bring their packs together. Mini-packs. Not _really_ packs, in their own right. An Alpha with one Beta was more of a sad little affair than a pack, but that’s what he was. His Mom, too. She only had Laura, technically. But Derek still deferred to her, even when he could feel his own power swirling inside him.

And she had about thirty or forty wolves who all answered to her too. Ones she paid, but ones that respected her. They might not have been pack proper, but they were something. A sense of a pack. Derek had Isaac. Enough for him.

Isaac might have been nervous, but not nearly as much as he was. There was a reason he’d put it off for so long. Sure, he wanted to keep the boy to himself, there was that, but it was also the sheer importance of the moment.

Introducing Isaac to his family was like a performance review of him as an Alpha. And though he’d never really wanted to be an Alpha, and didn’t care too much about it, it was important to him for Isaac’s sake that his Mom approved. He loved the kid. He was doing his best to take care of him.

Isaac had woken long before him, and wished him a happy birthday with a grin. They’d both decided that Derek should have breakfast with Talia and Laura, while Isaac went to see his father again. He’d come home from Christmas lunch with the man without so much as a bruise, but he was very quiet, and made it clear that he had to see the man again soon. Derek suspected he was trying to latch his claws back into Isaac.

He could only hope that the kid wouldn’t show up to Talia’s hurt. For one thing, he didn’t know if he could handle seeing him injured one more time, and for another, more selfish reason, he didn’t want it to look like he wasn’t doing his job as an Alpha and protecting him.

He’d told Stiles to come at noon, and Isaac was due to show up at eleven. He was there at five past, and Derek was already antsy enough to be checking his phone every twenty seconds.

When the knock at the door came, he jumped up immediately, rushing for it before his mother or sister could get there.

“What happened? You OK?” he asked in way of greeting, keeping his voice low so neither woman would listen in.

Isaac didn’t look harmed, and he nodded, stepping inside. His heartbeat was all twitchy and erratic, but Derek put that down to nerves.

“I’m fine, nothing happened,” he muttered. “Really. We can talk about this later, can we just do this?” he added, peering hesitantly around Derek’s body.

Nodding, Derek stepped aside, and tried to remember everything his Mom had taught him about being an Alpha. How to hold himself and how to gravitate around Isaac. Some of it had sunk in. Not all of it.

“Right, so,” he started, clearing his throat and returning to the sofa where his mother was sat, Laura at her side. Laura was every inch the potential Alpha. Derek wished, not for the first time, that it had been her his mother had chosen to share this with. And then he remembered it had brought him Isaac, and quickly took it back.

“Hello, Isaac,” Talia said with a smile, when it became apparent Derek was stuck for what to say next. “Nice to see you.”

“You too, Mrs. Hale,” the younger wolf replied, ducking his head the way Derek has taught him to. It hadn’t taken much teaching, though, to be honest. Isaac was submissive enough to do it naturally, something Derek didn’t like too much, not when he knew how forceful and snappy the kid could be when he was just _relaxed_.

Still nervous, so nervous he was almost trembling with it, Derek stepped forward and placed a hand on the back of Isaac’s neck, giving him silent permission to step forward. Talia stood smoothly, and leaned over to nuzzle at the boy’s neck, scent-marking. It might have been an old-fashioned gesture, but it was still important. Derek’s wolf purred happily at his mother’s acceptance of his Beta, and he began to relax.

“C’mere, cutie,” Laura piped up, breaking the quiet tension, and did the same, pressing her face into Isaac’s neck. He could feel the happiness radiating off the Beta, and the tight coil in the pit of his stomach finally unravelled. He’d gotten through doing this, and it had been fine. Isaac was happy.

“It’s such bullshit Derek kept you from us for so long,” she added, pulling back and grinning at the flush in Isaac’s cheeks. “You’re adorable.”

Now that he was more at ease, surrounded by the scent of pack, Derek could see that Isaac was falling into a casual stance, and grinned, taking a seat next to Laura.

“Adorable isn’t the word I would have chosen, but it’ll do,” he countered, and the two fell into a light chatter. Derek hovered where he was, before taking a seat next to his mother and breathing a small sigh of relief.

“Good job,” she said quietly. “He’s a lovely boy, Derek. I’m glad you chose him. And you’re doing a good job of training him.”

The words warmed him up inside, proud of himself, and he tried to smother the small smile stretching across his lips. He failed.

He stayed quiet for a lot of the conversation that followed, occasionally interjecting to correct something Isaac said, defending his honour, or to tell Laura to get fucked and stop telling embarrassing stories about him. It was easy and light and he was enjoying himself, something he hadn’t felt in a long while.

In fact, he was enjoying himself so much that he didn’t even realise a full hour had passed, and then came another knock at the door.

Stiles. He’d almost, almost forgotten that Stiles was coming, too. He hadn’t known what he was thinking when he invited the kid, only that he’d been sick to his stomach with worry that Stiles was never going to wake up. And the words had just tumbled out of his mouth.

In the wake of the texts in the middle of the night that had woken him up, he thought it probably wasn’t his worst idea ever. Stiles might be mouthy and immature at times, but it was clear he struggled with some of the same shit Derek did. That everyone in this line of work did.

He glanced at his family, but no one seemed to be too concerned about getting the door, so he stood, ignoring the smirk that appeared on Laura’s face.

“Hi,” he said, swinging the door open to greet Stiles. The man was dressed in an atrocious sweater, grinning. Derek could make out the shape of a Santa head in amongst what looked like twinkling glitter that could only have been magical.

“Merry Christmas!” Stiles replied enthusiastically. He was holding a bottle of something that looked like wine. Derek wondered if he knew he’d come to a house of werewolves and brought booze that would only affect him.

“Christmas was yesterday,” he pointed out, but stood aside to let Stiles in anyway. The human moved past him, with only a very slight wince he was clearly trying to hide that Derek caught anyway.

“Don’t be a Grinch,” Laura snapped from behind him. Stiles was loitering just in front of the door, smiling in the family’s direction. Derek could smell his nerves. Weak, but there. “Just because it’s your day, doesn’t mean we can’t still be feeling Christmassy,” she added.

Stiles turned to him, frowning.

“Why is it your day?” he asked, and before he could manage a reply, Isaac burst in, gleeful eagerness punctuating every word.

“It’s his birthday!” he explained. “Actually, yesterday was his birthday, but he gets jealous of everyone getting excited about Christmas.”

There was a pause, a quiet pause, and Laura burst out laughing, trying to smother it as Talia nudged her. Isaac grinned, cheeks pink and obviously proud of himself, and Stiles kept staring at Derek, mouth half open.

“You didn’t tell me it was your birthday!” he spluttered, finally, looking truly outraged. Embarrassed, Derek scowled, and shrugged it off, taking a seat back on the sofa, crossing his arms.

“I don’t celebrate it, it’s not like it matters,” he muttered. While Laura and Isaac’s faces softened, and he could smell their guilt, Stiles just scoffed, and sat down beside him, assuming he’d been invited to. Which, Derek guessed, he should have done.

“That’s ridiculous,” he told Derek. “Everyone loves their own birthday. It’s just a lie if you don’t. You get presents and everyone has to make a fuss of you for a whole day.”

He paused there, and looked over at the highly amused expression on the three wolves’ faces. “Oh!” he said, as if he’d just remembered. “Right, hi, sorry. Merry Christmas and everything. Uh, this is for you,” he added, thrusting the bottle toward whoever was going to reach out and take it.

Talia did, and rolling it over in her hands, smiled, handing it to Laura.

“Moonshine!” she exclaimed, jumping up off the sofa. “This is a great first impression,” she told Stiles. “We haven’t been properly introduced but I like you already.” With that, she left the room, returning moments later with several wine glasses all hooked around her fingers, in a way that would have been disastrous if Derek had ever tried it, and a bottle-opener.

“You bought my family moonshine for Christmas?” Derek asked incredulously, eyeing Stiles as if he couldn’t believe he was sitting right there so casually. “That’s expensive stuff.”

It was expensive precisely because it was a supernatural product, and anything on the supernatural black market, which was how he liked to think of it, was exorbitantly over-priced. The vendors took advantage of the fact that you couldn’t go to a Walmart and pick up the generic brand version.

Stiles blushed, and shook his head, sheepish.

“Well, no, I can’t really afford to _buy_ it,” he explained, looking embarrassed now. Derek almost regretted asking. “I mean, I might buy Scotty a bottle for his wedding or something, but for right now, I can just sort of make my version. But it won’t poison you or anything!” he added hurriedly. “It’s really good, Scott swears it’s like the real thing. I just enchant some normal booze, and … “he trailed off.

“It was very kind of you to bring us a gift, either way,” Talia said quickly, shooting Derek a look. “Thank you.”

Derek looked at his lap, feeling like a little kid again, before clearing his throat and looking up to meet Stiles’ eyes.

“Yeah, thanks,” he said quietly. “Sorry. Uh, this is my sister, Laura. Laura, this is Stiles. We work together,” he said, rather belatedly. Laura was too busy pouring the shining liquid into glasses to hold out a hand, but she looked up and grinned.

“Yeah, I’ve heard all about you,” she said. “Mostly good things, don’t worry.” She took a sip from her own glass, and followed it up with a happy moan. “Oh my god, this is amazing, man. We’re keeping you. Derek, why can’t you magic us up bottles of this stuff?”

Stiles beamed, and Derek pulled an impressed face at her.

“Because it’s incredibly hard to change a liquid’s original form. You have to alter it at the molecular level,” he explained with a withering glare. “Why do you think everyone was so impressed when Jesus magicked up some wine?”

There was a choked off little bout of laughter from beside him, and Derek looked over, startled, to see that Stiles’ whole face had gone red, and he was trying to smother his laughter.          

“What?” he asked, brow furrowing. Stiles was still red, but he let his laughter out, a spluttering noise that petered off into a giggle.

“I didn’t know you could make jokes!” he said, like he’d just discovered gold, or radium. He could hear Laura snickering on his other side.

“I can make jokes,” he muttered, but his cheeks were beginning to heat. He knew this was a bad idea. He was already being ganged up on. Like when he was a kid again and his older brothers used to play keep-away with him.

Thankfully, Laura handed him a glass of the shine, which when up close, really _did_ shimmer like magic, and he took a sip to keep himself from making any more grumbly comments. His Mom might him over the back of his head if he did that, and he really didn’t need to be more embarrassed.

“Holy shit,” he said, licking his lips, surprised. “This is delicious.”

“I already told you that, no need to sound so shocked,” Laura countered, rolling her eyes. Stiles, though, looked more pleased with himself than he already was, and didn’t make another crack about his sense of humour, so he took that as a victory.

“How are you doing, Stiles?” Talia asked, taking her own glass happily. There was only enough in the bottle for a half-glass for each of them, but with how good it tasted, he doubted anyone was going to forfeit their chance to taste it.

“Fine and dandy!” Stiles answered immediately with a beam. It was only when he was met with a pause that his face fell a little. “OK, so I’m still a little sore. But I’m healing OK. I can walk around on my own, mostly. Just no strenuous activity, doc says,” he admitted, looking horribly unimpressed about it.

“I bet the ladies are just heartbroken about that, huh?” Laura asked, her voice bordering on that same sly tone Derek knew and dreaded.

Stiles choked on his first mouthful of shine, and shook his head, blushing the faintest bit.

“Uh, yes and no,” he answered. “Sometimes ladies, sometimes not. Depends on the lady or dude in question. And pretty much neither, right now. It’s true, yes. I am hopelessly single,” he answered, clearly trying to joke it away.

It was too bad he didn’t know Laura well enough to know that she didn’t let go of things she had between her teeth, and this was definitely something she’d picked up.

“I don’t believe it,” she said, waving a hand. It was all an act, and not one Derek liked all too much. “Handsome boy like you? And you have double the opportunity. How could you be single?”

Before Stiles could actually open his mouth and answer, Isaac had butted in, his own cheeks pink, and, Derek suspected, not from the shine.

“Maybe he’s just waiting for the right – person,” he offered up in his attempt to be casual, which was anything but. Stiles shot him a curious kind of look, one which was followed up with a split second of realization, a look Derek was pretty sure only he noticed. Isaac was too busy looking down into his glass, and the women were looking between the three of them.

“Right!” Stiles said finally. “Yep, that’s completely it. Waiting for the right person. Just very fussy, not undesirable or a workaholic at all,” he added.

“Speaking of work,” Derek said, clearing his throat, before Talia shot him a sharp glance.

“I thought we agreed not to talk about work, Derek,” she warned, voice just as sharp as her glance. And yes, they’d decided not to talk about work (she had), in an attempt to be sociable and not be stuck talking about horrible things like the murder of the week, or Stiles’ unfortunate incident.

“I _know_ ,” he huffed, leaning back against the sofa back, bringing himself a little closer to Stiles without quite realizing it. “But I was just going to say, I’m feeling a little snowed-under,” he said. It was a lie, he felt fine at work, and he liked his workload. It kept his mind and his hands busy. But this was serving a point, and if they heard the skip in his heart-rate, they knew better than to question it.

He glanced over at Stiles, almost imperceptibly, hoping he’d get the idea. This was supposed to be helping along his decision to ask for another kind of work to do. No sane person would send a kid back to the job where he got stabbed. Derek might not be all up there and with it when it came to mental health (especially not his own), but he knew what would trigger any possible PTSD, and that was it, right there.

“You are?” Talia asked, confused. “Honey, I thought you were doing fine. Why didn’t you say anything sooner?”

He felt a little bad about eliciting her genuine concern, because genuine concern for him was usually caused by shit a lot worse than a heavy workload, but this was in the interests of something more important.

He shrugged, and took another sip from his glass, playing it off like nothing.

“It wasn’t so bad before, but with all the extra paperwork and shit I’m doing because we don’t have the money to send it out to an accountant anymore, it’s a lot,” he answered, and Stiles’ foot brushed alongside his, a little nudge. He hoped like hell that meant the kid actually got what he was trying to do.

“I know, I know, I’m sorry about that. We’re squeezed tight enough as it is, I really can’t hire someone else to help you out, Derek,” Talia sighed, and come on, Stiles, this is your opening, just fucking go for it.

“I could help.”

There it was. Derek slumped back against his seat, relieved. He didn’t want to have to push that any further.

“With … Derek’s work?” Talia asked slowly.

“Well, yeah, I mean. I know he does sciencey stuff. And magic and science are basically best friends, magic is just science we don’t understand yet,” Stiles answered with a shrug. Derek felt a little surge of warmth at. He’d never thought about it in those words exactly, but when he used his own little magical tricks alongside his work, it had always felt seamless. He liked the way Stiles put it.

“I get that … it might take away from what I’m doing,” Stiles was saying when he tuned back in, and he sounded unsure now. “But – I could help out Derek and Dr. Deaton and maybe just not do what I was doing. It could be … helpful.”

Derek had never heard so many pauses in Stiles’ speech, and he’d heard a hell of a lot of the man’s speech at this point. Even if he hadn’t been able to smell the nervousness on the air, he would have been able to sense it.

Talia took a long minute to reply, which Derek thought was kind of cruel, couldn’t they see how worried Stiles was about this, he’d been lying in bed panicking about it, for god’s sake.  She shared a look with Laura, and Derek could see Isaac perking up at the idea of Stiles back in the office with him again. He was going to have to talk to the Beta about that when they got home.

“Well, I don’t see why we couldn’t do that,” Talia answered finally, smiling. “Of course we could work something out. I’m sure Derek would appreciate your help, Stiles. Peter can continue on his own, I’m sure he can manage it.”

The point of Stiles’ being _assigned_ to that job had been because Peter couldn’t manage it on his own, but Derek didn’t bring that point up, not when he’d won _his_ point.

Laura stiffened at the mention of her Uncle, visibly, and though everyone in the room saw it, and saw her subsequent gulp of shine, finishing off her glass, they said nothing.

“Really?” Stiles said instead, eyes shining. He looked hopeful. Smelled it. Derek liked it. It was much better than the slightly sour scent of his nervousness. Much, much better than the acrid tone of misery his messages had given off the night previous.

“Yes, really. Derek tells me you’re a very talented magic user. You could prove useful in that department,” she replied, before changing posture, a clear sign she wanted to change the subject. “Now, I think that’s enough about work, don’t you? Are you hungry, Stiles? Isaac?” she added, glancing between the two of them.

“I’m always hungry,” Stiles answered, and Isaac smirked, nodding. “Food would be nice,” he said.

Despite his firm insistence that they not cook his favourites, of course his mother and sister had gone to the trouble of doing so. Probably because he’d said not to.

They moved to get up and sit at the table, when Stiles tugged on his sleeve, holding them back for a second. Isaac hesitated when he saw, eyes lingering on them for a moment, but he swallowed and dragged them away. They definitely needed to talk.

“Hey,” Stiles said quietly. “Thanks. For that. It was super decent of you. Way to not handle that like a blunt dick, really.” If Derek couldn’t hear the sincerity in his voice, he would have been tempted to think he was being mocked.

“It’s no problem,” he brushed off, but Stiles was still holding on to his sleeve, and showing no signs of letting it go.

“Dude. Really. And thanks for last night. I was bugging out about it, and you really helped. So. Yeah. Also, fuck you for not telling me it was your birthday,” he said, letting go of his sleeve to punch him lightly on the arm.

Biting back the urge to tell Stiles he didn’t _like_ his birthday, and there was a reason he didn’t tell anyone, Derek joined him at the table, sitting between Stiles and Laura, Isaac quickly taking the seat on Stiles’ other side.

“Are we really eating your favourites all day?” Isaac groaned, eyeing the plates Talia was setting down before them. To Derek, it all smelled pretty heavenly, even if he’d told them a hundred times _not_ to do it.

“Dude, why do you have a problem with eating potato salad and grilled cheese and – is that blueberry cobbler?” Stiles asked excitedly, leaning over the table to get a look at the plate before Talia pushed him gently back in his seat and gave him a plate of his own.

“I don’t have a problem, but Derek cooks this shit at home all the time,” Isaac grumbled, even as he picked up a fork with what looked like a decent amount of eagerness. “Uh, not that I’m not glad to have it,” he added sheepishly, looking up at Talia. “Yours looks way nicer than Derek’s anyway.”

Rather than trying to refute any of it, Derek simply picked up his own fork and stabbed it into a cube of potato, popping it into his mouth and trying not to smile around it.  All his Mom’s cooking tasted like home, like his childhood, but these were his favourites for a reason.

“Are these really your favourite foods?” Stiles asked him. Though he was almost certain the kid would have spoken with his mouth full, Derek opted to swallow first, and then answer.

“I like carbs,” he said shortly, before sighing. “And Mom insists on cooking them when it’s my birthday,” he added, shoving more food into his mouth so he didn’t have to talk again.

“Don’t deprive your mother of spoiling her baby,” Talia said reprovingly, but she followed it up with a small smile. “Eat your lunch.”

So he did. And to be fair, he did eat every crumb, and he loved it. He might try to pretend that it wasn’t his birthday, but it still felt nice to be doted on. Maybe, a little. Not that he was going to admit it aloud.      

For all Isaac’s grumbling, he was the first to finish, with Stiles as a close second, the both of them grinning and leaning back in their chairs, pleased with themselves. When they opened their mouths to talk to one another, Derek could see their tongues were blue from the cobbler, just like he knew his would be when he was done.

He was hit with an unpleasant jolt when he took a look at the both of them and realized he was much more interested in Stiles’ blue tongue.

Isaac seemed to be too, watching the human with hungry eyes that Derek was sure he wasn’t trying to hide. If Stiles noticed, he didn’t say anything about it. Maybe he liked it. The thought made Derek’s stomach churn rather horribly, and he looked down at his plate, confused.

“Did you have a nice Christmas yesterday, boys?” Talia asked, looking happier at the table than she had in a long while. Derek could see her in her element, surrounded by pack and her family. It made him feel a little less churlish.

Isaac paled, and they were _definitely_ talking about what happened at his fucking father’s house, but he nodded, wiping at the corner of his mouth to brush off a few crumbs.

“We don’t really do a lot,” he said, shrugging. “It’s just me and my Dad. So – I mean, he doesn’t know a lot about … this,” he added, gesturing to the room.

He knew nothing about ‘this’, but Derek knew it was better to keep it that way.  

Laura’s brow furrowed, but she said nothing, and Isaac kept it at that. Derek was pretty sure something had happened.

“We didn’t do a whole lot, either,” Stiles piped up, seeming to pick up on the tension. “My Dad _does_ know about all this, but he’s not super into me being a big part of it. He deals with it. It was awesome to see him, even if it _was_ because I was near-mortally injured,” he added with a grin that didn’t quite reach his eyes.

“Yeah, because that’s totally going to make him like your job even more,” Isaac dead-panned, and laughed when Stiles elbowed him hard.

“Shut up. He trusts Scott to protect me. Like I need protecting,” he retorted, rolling his eyes.

“You could do with a bodyguard, it’d stop you getting into so much fucking trouble.”

He wasn’t sure why’d said it, since Isaac and Stiles seemed to be just fine bantering on their own, and his Mom and sister were looking at him like he’d grown two heads.

Stiles took it in his stride, though, like he did with everything.

“I don’t go looking for trouble,” he argued. “Trouble finds _me_.”

“Yeah, sure thing, Boy Who Lived.”

“Hey, A+ reference, that works for a variety of reasons.”

“You don’t need a hero complex any bigger than the one you’ve already got.”

“I don’t have a hero _complex_. I _am_ a hero. There’s a difference.”

“Yeah. Delusion.”

The room was painfully quiet except for Stiles’ snort of laughter. Talia was watching him with a mix of fondness and amazement, her mouth curling into a small smile. Laura had dropped her fork, her mouth open slightly.

And Isaac looked devastated.

“What?” he said, looking around at them. “What? Will someone speak, please?”

“Nothing, nothing, dear. Give me your plates, come on. Laura, Isaac, would you like to come and help me with the dishes?” Talia said. It wasn’t a real question.

“Oh, I’ll help, too!” Stiles said brightly, moving to get out of his seat.

“No,” Talia replied firmly. “You’re a guest. Sit down and enjoy being waited on.”

“I’m a guest, too,” Isaac pointed out.

“You’re pack, and when I have my way, you’ll be here all the time. Get your skinny ass in the kitchen,” Laura interjected, swinging an arm around his neck playfully and dragging him into the other room, shooting Derek a pointed glance from over her shoulder.

Stiles watched, sitting back down, looking a little bewildered.

“Your family’s weird, man,” he said after a moment. Derek barked out a laugh, and leaned right back in his seat, stretching with a yawn. Big meals always made him sleepy, just like when he was a cub.

“You haven’t seen them in full swing. They’re behaving for your benefit,” he told the man. “I think mostly because you brought them moonshine. Which was – pretty good,” he admitted, looking at Stiles sideways. “I meant it about not being able to make that myself. It’s _hard_.”

Stiles shrugged, but he was clearly pleased with the comment.

“Well, yeah, it took a while to work out, and caused more than a few minor explosions in my room,” he explained with a bit of a sheepish grin. “And more often than not, I just got really weird, gross fizzy drink. But after a while of tweaking, I worked it out. It’s not that hard, really, you just have to really understand the water. Like, get right down there with it on molecule level and _get_ it. It wants to be shine in its little watery heart, you just have to help it get there.”

He was beginning to glow again, the actual shimmer coating his skin and making him look as if he was sitting behind a particularly strong moon.

“You’re bizarre,” Derek said finally, after a long moment of trying to take in exactly what Stiles had actually said. “But it was appreciated. You didn’t have to bring anything.” And now he sounded awkward again. Fucking wonderful.

“Of course I did! It’s Christmas, you have to give presents,” Stiles said, mock-outraged. “I just didn’t know what to bring for everyone, so I thought … collective gift.” He paused, before shifting in his seat, curling his legs beneath him and sitting on his knees, almost.

“I’m gonna give Isaac his present later, but I have yours. You want it?”

He sounded both eager and a little hesitant, and Derek could see the flush in his cheeks, waiting.

“You got me a present?” he asked, dumbly. Almost disbelievingly.

“Duh. Christmas. Presents. Did we not just go over this?” Stiles looked impatient, now.

“OK, sorry,” Derek said quickly, holding his hands up. “Yeah, go ahead. I’ll – take it now.”

He didn’t like presents, really, and he didn’t want them. But … Stiles had gotten him a present, and he found himself waiting for it as eagerly as he would have when he was a little kid years ago, excited.

Stiles grinned, and pulled something out of his pocket, something long. When Derek took a closer look, it was a chain, a thin one. It was weaved out of what looked like silver, plenty of little strands all coming together like it might have done if it was made of hemp or string, not metal.

“I made it,” Stiles blurted out, holding it in the palm of his hand. “So, um. Again with the being broke thing. I couldn’t afford to buy you flashy shit for your car, or. So I made this. It’s silver, but I treated it with the right magic so it can’t hurt you.”

Derek was still staring, silent.

“I didn’t put a pendant on it or whatever, I didn’t know if you’d be into that. And those things usually tend to be personal and I thought I might fuck up the personal thing, and – “Stiles was rambling now, filling in the silence Derek was leaving wide open. “It’s really stupid, but it’s meant to be like … you know in Deathly Hallows, Luna has that chain in her room, made up of all her friends’ names? Well, if you look super close, this – it sort of has names, too.”

The human looked well and truly horrified with himself for babbling so much, his cheeks a dark pink now, the embarrassed shade, and he thrust his hand out, the chain dangling between his fingers, for Derek to take.

It took him a second, but he did, gingerly taking it from Stiles’ fingers and holding it against his palm, holding it up close to his face to peer at it. And now that he’d been told about it, yeah. He could see names. Names woven in with the thin strands of silver. It had to be magic; that was the only explanation.

Over and over, he could see the same names repeated, in silvery letters.

_LauraTaliaIsaacStilesLauraTaliaIsaacStilesLauraTaliaIsaacStilesLauraTaliaIsaacStiles_

There was a lump in his throat, a horrible lump that he knew wasn’t going to go away, and he had to try his utmost not to let it get any worse and turn into _fucking tears._

“It was presumptuous, right?” Stiles said quickly, when he still hadn’t said a word. “I can – I can fix the spell, so it doesn’t have my name on there. I just thought, you know, we’re friends, I think, and you invited me, so – but it doesn’t have to be on there, just say the –“

Derek cut him off by doing something very, very uncharacteristic. He hugged him. Stiles shut up immediately his body frozen, before Derek felt his arms wrap around his body, and hugged him back. It was strange, to have another body pressed this close against him again after so long, but he breathed in Stiles’ scent until he was certain he wouldn’t embarrass himself by doing something ridiculous like crying, and only then, pulled back.

Stiles’ eyes were wide, but he was grinning like a madman.

“So, you like it?” he asked.

“It’s perfect,” Derek answered, finally, finally speaking, finding the words. They weren’t a lot, but it was something. Stiles flushed, and the scent that hit the air was unmistakable pure _happiness_. He was still holding the chain in his hand, delicate, so as not to break it.

“Oh, but hey, you didn’t tell me it was your birthday!” Stiles added. “I would have got you a _birthday_ present, too.”

Derek didn’t think he could possibly have topped this, and he didn’t want anything else. This was more than enough. This was … special.

He opened his mouth to say as much, but Stiles cut him off, and grabbed the salt shaker from the middle of the table. It was carved from wood, a special kind of wood from their home town, a gift from distant relatives when Laura had turned 21. Stiles couldn’t have known its importance, and Derek suspected he’d just reached for whatever was closest.

“What are you doing?” he asked, puzzled. Stiles had laid the shaker on its side and was rubbing his hand over the side, face caught in an expression of determination.

“Ssh,” he hushed, and right before Derek’s eyes, the shaker was beginning to morph, the wood softening, and – and _melting away_.

“No!” he said quickly, but it was already happening, and before he could reach out to stop Stiles, the shaker was perfect again, looking just as it had, and there was a lump of what looked like wood, but soft and pliable, like clay.

“What?” Stiles looked up, alarmed. “What did I do?”

Derek shook his head, astonished. “Nothing. It’s OK.”

Stiles studied him for a second, but then turned back to the strange wood-clay, moulding it in his fingers until it began to take a form. Derek watched, enthralled by the way Stiles’ long fingers could make the lump actually look like something, and sucked in a breath when he realized what it _was_.

It was a little wolf, about the size of Derek’s palm. Smaller. It had four legs and a tail and a perfectly formed little face with red eyes that – blinked.

“Like him?” Stiles asked, smiling again. He was glowing again.

The wolf was blinking up at him, and then it yapped, a tiny sound that had Derek laughing. It yapped at him again, and then began to chase its tail.

“How did you do that?”

“It was just a little rush of magic, it wasn’t much,” Stiles assured him. “Nothing big. He won’t be alive for long, that’s only enough to keep him awake for a few hours. But he’s cute, huh? Happy Birthday.”

Derek watched the tiny wolf chase its tail until it tired out, and looked up at him again, red eyes blinking. He held out a hand, and it climbed up his arm to sit on his shoulder.

“Thank you,” he said, meeting Stiles’ eyes. It was more than a thank you for just the wolf.

“You’re welcome,” the human replied, voice a little softer than usual. His cheeks were still stained a light pink, and Derek could see the fading blue on his tongue. He was almost tempted to lean over and see if it still tasted like blueberry, almost ready to do it, fuck his instincts, and –

“What are you doing in here?”

He startled, and felt Stiles do the same, the both of them looking up to see a very smug Laura watching them.

“Nothing,” he snapped. He could feel Stiles eyeing him, but a second later, he nodded.

“Yep, totally nothing,” he echoed. Laura looked unconvinced.

“Listen, I’m probably gonna take off, but uh, thanks for having me,” Stiles added, standing and brushing off his jeans. Derek felt his stomach drop, and glared hard at Laura. To be fair, she looked a little crest-fallen, too.

“Oh, you don’t have to go,” she said hurriedly.

“Nah, I promised Scott I’d be home and spend some of the day with him, so. But it was really nice! Tell your Mom she’s a good cook,” Stiles answered, grinning. He knew full well that Talia would be able to hear him from the kitchen.

“Thank you, Stiles. You have a good night,” she called out, proving him right.

Laura still looked disappointed, but she leaned in to hug Stiles, the same way Derek had. What flared up was _not_ jealousy.

“You can come over anytime you like. We like you,” she told him, and shoved Derek gently on her back into the kitchen.

“You can bring Scott next time,” Derek said quickly, after a second. “I should have invited him, too. I don’t really know him, but – you can invite him.”

Stiles grinned, properly, this one reaching his eyes, and he nodded, tucking one hand into his back pocket.

“I will, man,” he said happily. “You’ll like him. He’s sweet.” And with that, he leaned down and brushed his lips over Derek’s cheek, feather-light and swift, before he pulled back again, his cheeks dark again.

“Um. Bye,” he said quickly, and practically raced out the door, leaving Derek sitting, shocked, right where he was, the little wolf snoring on his shoulder and the chain still dangling from his fingers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one took exactly a month to update. Whoops. To be fair, I have just finished the last of my exams. (Yay). Anyway, enjoy! We're 90,000 words in and finally feelings are developing.


	15. Chapter 15

_‘My Dad hates you, and he might end up killing me this year, so you probably don’t want to be witness to that.’_

The words had been meant as a joke, but Isaac knew just how close they might come to being the truth. He could walk into his father’s house on Christmas Day and never come out again. He was tempted to just decide not to spend Christmas with his father this year. To just – stay with Derek. His real family. 

This was the year he was going to meet the family, anyway, properly. When Derek had decided that he liked Isaac enough to introduce them, he assumed. Or just the time he’d got enough courage to do it. Either way, this year could have been different. 

It wasn’t, though, because he was still Isaac’s father, and it was still Christmas. Christmas was for family, and his father was blood.

It had been a mistake. A big mistake. Like most of his decisions inevitably were. Derek had been set against it, his jaw clenched the way it always did when Isaac went to visit. He was getting better at arguing, though, telling Derek to shove it, that he was going to do what he wanted, and this was what he wanted. 

He was naïve to believe that they could have had a nice, peaceful Christmas dinner together. That his father would have been _kind_ enough to just sit at a table and not pick away at every detail of his life. 

Mostly, he could take it. They’d been on very shaky ground since the last time. Since that had gone to hell. Isaac had taken his beatings and apologized and heard every nasty thing that had come out of the man’s mouth. He was going to be taken back, because he was sure his father was never going to let him _go_. 

If only he’d just let him go. 

But it had been terrible. Every word was a little dig at him, getting less subtle as the evening went on. He kept his lips tight and thin and said nothing, only murmuring in assent when it was needed. He was meeting them tomorrow, there couldn’t be any marks. He couldn’t let it happen. 

And then the man had started in on Derek. He’d been drunk. Started early, and just kept drinking. Every word came with a breath of stinking liquor. How living with him was inappropriate. How they must be fucking. The words grew vulgar, like they always did. Circled back to his mother, and Cam, before he was complaining about Isaac again. 

And then it turned to Stiles. The man Isaac had spoken about, tentative, in explanation where the car had suddenly come from. Well, if he wasn’t fucking Derek, he must be fucking the other. Or maybe it was both of them, maybe he was giving it up all over town, so why shouldn’t he come home and sell himself for a real profit? 

Too much. Isaac sat at the table, trembling with the exertion of not snapping, with fear, with anger. White hot anger searing his veins and making it hard, _so_ fucking hard not to just shift and roar and terrify his father into submission. 

Derek would be so disappointed in him if he snapped. He’d spent hours and hours at the start teaching him control, shackling him up on the first full moon when he’d really needed it, and staying with him all night, soothing his wolf. He’d put in a whole ton of time since then teaching him how to keep the shift under control when he was mad, or afraid. How to heal, which was maybe the most important. Magical werewolf healing powers were a lot better for covering up bruises than makeup. 

Derek might say ‘I told you so’, too. He _had_ told him so. Told him that he didn’t fucking want him still associating with the man. That it was stupid and dangerous to keep going back to him, and that he didn’t _have_ to, Derek could take care of it for him. 

He didn’t know how to explain how hard it was to abandon family. As it turned out, Derek understood that, anyway. 

“Don’t just fucking sit there, _boy_ , don’t you ignore me.” 

He hadn’t meant to ignore him, but ignoring it seemed to be the only way he could get through it without hurting anyone. His Dad, or himself. 

“Don’t talk about them like that,” he warned, voice low like Derek’s got when he was really mad. He picked up a lot of his habits from Derek, and he acknowledged that. It made him kind of proud. 

“What did you just say to me? I’ll talk about them any damn way I like, boy. This is my roof. That’s my food you’re eating. Been eating me out of goddamn house and home since you were a snot-nosed little brat.” The words were beginning to slur, but Isaac had heard all these ones before. He could basically recite it himself. 

_Killed your mother. Drove your no-good faggot brother away. Left me with_ **_you_ ** _._

It was nothing new, but it still stung every time. Cam had used to be his trigger, the thing that got him locked away in the freezer, but he’d learned not to bite back about him anymore. For a while, he didn’t have anyone he cared enough about to upset him. Now, there were two, and his father knew where to hit where it hurt. 

“If you don’t stop, I’m going to leave, and not come back,” he said quietly, when the man had finished his tirade. They were fighting words, and he knew it, but instead of riling the man up, he sat silent, staring. His chin wobbled, though that was likely from the drink, and his eyes had bulged. He looked like he might shout, but in the end, he didn’t. 

“You look so much like her,” he said instead, gruff, but not cruel, the way most of his words came out, sharp and edged. It was a shock, because of all the shit he’d had thrown at him in the last few years, that wasn’t one of the more frequent. It had been a while since he’d said that, actually. Mostly, it happened when he was sad, not angry. 

He just looked sad, now. A sad, drunk old man. Lonely. Isaac knew it went against logic, and all common sense, but he felt a pang of sympathy. Losing his mother had been hard on everyone. Cam had started plotting ways to get away from them, watching their father go mad with grief. Got himself killed in the process. And his father – it hit him harder than maybe any of them. Turned him into the thing sitting before Isaac now.

“I know, Dad,” he said softly. “I’m gonna come back tomorrow, and we can forget about today. OK?” he added. He felt much more adult than he really was. He was the baby here, and yet, here he was babying his own father through Christmas. 

The man didn’t say anything, but his eyes had taken on that faraway look they got when he’d drunk too much, and he didn’t recognize his own surroundings anymore. He was too far gone in memories. If Isaac wasn’t still a little sore from the last beating he’d had, he might have moved to kiss the man’s head, like a child, but he was still wary of those fists, so instead, he stood, and pushed his chair in. 

“Night, Dad. Merry Christmas,” he said in way of parting, though he knew the words weren’t going to be heard. He could have said anything, and his father would just have stared right through him at the wall, seeing ghosts. 

Derek said nothing when he came home, but he could feel his eyes looking him over for bruises. The softer tone his Dad had used had left Isaac aching. He wasn’t in the mood to placate Derek’s fears. He sat on the sofa with him instead and watched some stupid Christmas film on TV. He didn’t think either of them were really paying attention. 

Next morning, he was all hyped up on nerves and excitement and anticipation. This was real Christmas. Hale Christmas. He wished Derek his quiet Happy Birthday, even if it only earned him a weak glare, and rugged himself up before he went out into the cold, parting ways with the Alpha for the morning. 

He’d only need to spend a few hours at his family home before he could get to Derek’s. That was just enough to hopefully have a peaceful breakfast, and talk a little. Maybe he’d even be in the mood to talk about Belinda. His Mom. He wasn’t holding out any hope there, though. No one had spoken her name in the Lahey household in years. 

He wasn’t expecting a complete turn-around, but he thought he’d at least gotten through to the man. Just slightly. Enough to stop lashing out, angry, and hurting him. Enough to make things tolerable between them again. 

But when he went back, the plates from yesterday were still on the table, untouched. The food on them had gone off. The glass his father had been drinking from was there too, long dry. The man himself was nowhere to be found. 

“Dad?” he called out, cautious. Maybe the man had worked himself into a drunken mess. That seemed likely. He might still be in bed, sleeping it off. He probably didn’t know that Isaac was going to come back, even. That made for dangerous territory, but he was here now. He had to make sure he hadn’t choked on his own vomit or anything. 

He’d gotten halfway to the bedroom, the middle of the hall, when he felt himself slammed up against the wall, his back hitting it hard. It had happened so quickly that he didn’t quite know what had happened for a dizzying second. The boozey breath inches from his face cleared that right up.

Sean was pinning him against the wall, sneering into his face. He was clearly still drunk, or maybe it was the tail end of a bender, and he looked _angry_. 

“Think you can threaten me?” he snarled. Isaac should have been scared, and he was, a little, but mostly all he could think about was that his father’s snarl was pitiful compared to Derek’s. Compared to his own. 

“I didn’t –“ he started to say, but the arm across his throat pressed in hard, and he choked on the next words, shocked. 

“Don’t lie to me. You don’t get to _leave_. You leave when I say so, and when you do, you’ll be doing it _dead_.” It was only fitting that those words were spat, since there was spittle on Isaac’s face now. 

“Dad, I – I can’t breathe,” he rasped out, but the arm only increased its pressure against his windpipe, and he really couldn’t breathe.

“You’re going to move back here. You’re going to make me money. You’re going to do your _duty,_ do you understand me?” Sean demanded. His eyes were shining, but Isaac didn’t think it was from the alcohol. 

None of that was what he wanted, none, and he’d said no to these demands before. But he hadn’t had a strong wall of muscle pressed against his throat that time, cutting off his air, making the edges of his vision go all blurry. 

“Yes,” he gasped out. “I will, Dad, but I – I can’t _breathe.”_

He was getting dizzy when the man finally let him go. Dizzy enough that he thought he might really pass out. Might die from this. He’d been hurt bad before, and been terrified as a little kid when he was locked up in that freezer.

He spluttered, choking as he tried to suck in deep breaths, barely even paying attention to anything but the sudden airflow returning to his lungs. 

“Am I understood?” 

The words were vague and fuzzy to Isaac’s ears, but he nodded all the same, knowing that whatever his father had said, it was best to just agree with it. The man offered him a disdainful look, before shoving him out of the way and storming back down the hall, presumably to find his booze again. 

Isaac breathed heavily, fists clenched by his side. He could feel little pinpricks of pain, his claws popping out against his will. Focusing on the pain, he forced them back, exhaling shakily. He didn’t hesitate for much longer, though, taking his chance and swiftly racing out the door, too fast for Sean to catch him even if he’d wanted to. 

He had Derek waiting.  

And he was never, ever going back to that fucking house. 

* * *

Being in a room with people who loved him after - _that_ \- was disconcerting. He knew that Derek was going to be able to see that he was acting strangely, no matter how hard he tried to push it out of his mind, to forcibly forget his father’s hot breath on his face. There hadn’t even been any bruises this time around, no broken bones, no cuts. But it lingered in his mind, refusing to budge. 

Talia and Laura were every bit the welcoming hosts he knew that they would be. Derek had warned him, mostly light-heartedly, that they’d be saccharine and overwhelming and would want to coddle him. That, or it would be stiff and awkward and too formal. He was glad that it was the former. 

But being surrounded by so much love and warmth and _family_ , it was setting his teeth on edge. This was his home. This was his family. Not the man he’d left in that tomb he called a house, full of ghosts. This was the Christmas he’d always wanted, and it was being marred by phantom spasms of his throat, screaming for air when he had plenty. 

“What happened? You OK?” Derek had asked him almost immediately. Like hell he was going to talk about what had happened, what was going on in his head, not when this was such a big moment for Derek. For both of them. He wasn’t ruining this. 

After that, it was easier to pretend as if nothing had happened, to pretend like his only worries were what the Hales were going to think of him. He liked them, like this. Talia had always been kind enough to him in the office, had been the one to give him the job and had never treated him like a lesser when he was bitten. But she’d always been professional, and cool. 

Here, she was warm and friendly, more like the mother Derek had told him about, laughing and teasing her children, watching him with fond eyes, making sure that he felt welcome. 

_This_ was his family. Blood meant - well. Not nothing. Blood would always mean something to him, because blood connected him to his mother and his brother, long gone now. But when it was his blood being spilled, and if he went back, he knew it would be, he couldn’t do it anymore. He had the bite now. He had a family again. 

And friends. Scott and Stiles. Not exactly the gang of friends he’d always envisioned having when he was this age — when Cam was still alive, his fantasies used to be much more optimistic — but they were friends. Good friends. Scott was easy to talk to, and friendly, and another wolf, which helped. Derek was good company, but his wolf needed more than that to interact with. 

But Stiles. _He_ was the one who’d made an impact. Stiles was the one who had been kind to him, who hadn’t babied him or spoke in soft voices or avoided him because he showed up dotted in bruises. Stiles had gone out of his way to help him, and to help Derek in return, and look what he’d got for it. A crazed human stabbing him. The office of werewolves sneering at him. 

And Derek. He’d clearly got Derek out of it all. It was a blow to the gut, that knowledge. He could see it in the way that Derek was watching Stiles all throughout lunch, eyes lingering on his tongue in a way that they had never lingered on him. It couldn’t just be friendship, then. It was more, even if Derek didn’t quite realise it yet.

As for whether or not Stiles actually returned the attraction, well. That was harder to place. Stiles was a strange (wonderful) personality. He was kind, yeah, but he was kind to everyone he liked. Isaac had seen him be cold and snarky to the people he _didn’t_ like, or even the people he didn’t really care for, but if you were in his good books, then Isaac was pretty sure you’d have a friend for life. 

Friend. Not lover. He treated Derek much the same way that he treated Isaac, which was - confusing, to say the least. Maybe he didn’t like either of them. Maybe he liked both. Maybe he liked one of them, but he was terrible at flirting and too good at just being nice. 

Didn’t matter, anyway. Because Derek liked him. _Really_ liked him. He listened to what Stiles had to say, paid attention to where he was and what he was doing, was as quick to jump to his defence as he was to jump to Isaac’s. He’d never seen his Alpha like that with anyone before, anyone that wasn't him. 

Like hell he was going to take that away. 

“Are you okay?” Derek asked him quietly as he drove back the loft (home). His cheeks were still pink from something that had happened when Isaac had left the room, and he knew it had something to do with Stiles. There was a little wooden wolf in the front pocket of his shirt, its paws peeking out over the top, and it seemed to be sleeping. Derek hadn’t explained it. 

“Fine,” Isaac replied, just as quietly. The soft rumble of the engine was louder than their voices. “I had fun.” 

Derek’s brow furrowed, and he kept his eyes on the road, hands firm on the steering wheel, tightening a little as Isaac spoke. He looked - not angry, but not pleased. Grave. 

“Are you going to tell me what happened with your father now?” he asked. It was a question, but one that demanded one of two answers. 

“I don’t want to - “

“Too bad, Isaac. You said later, it’s later. Talk.” 

There was no escaping it when Derek had made his mind up like this. Isaac took a breath, a shaky one, and tried to ignore the feeling of relief when the air made it all the way to his lungs. 

“I don’t wanna go back there anymore,” he answered finally, his voice so small that if Derek hadn’t been a werewolf, it would have been unintelligible over the noise of the engine. 

There was a pause. 

“You don’t have to.” 

The reply was soft, but firm. The way it always had been. He knew that Derek was displeased, and that was understatement, about his continued bond with his father. This was probably music to his ears. But he didn’t look happy. 

“Did he - do something?” Derek added, and his voice faltered there, stumbling over the implication like he wasn’t sure what to do with it. 

“He hurt me. Enough’s enough,” he answered, mouth setting into a hard line meant to tell the Alpha that he was _not_ saying any more about it, not now. 

He seemed to get the message, nodding once and keeping silent until they were home, moving immediately to the kitchen to make a dinner they wouldn’t eat for hours and hours. The wolf was still in his breast pocket, and Isaac could see a small glint of silvery chain hanging out of the pocket of his jeans.  

“What’s that?” he said, breaking the silence that had fallen between them, his voice as much of a surprise to him as to Derek. He was leaning against the back of the sofa, and when Derek turned, puzzled, he gestured to the chain. 

“Oh,” Derek said, and his cheeks got pinker. He pulled out the chain delicately, handling it like it was made of something terribly fragile. “My Christmas present. From Stiles.” 

His gut lurched, and though he saw what looked like contrition on Derek’s face, he focused on the silvery chain. 

“It’s pretty,” he said finally. It was. It was lovely. But his voice betrayed how he was feeling, and Derek abandoned peeling the carrots to lean beside him, giving Isaac the chain to hold. 

“Look at it closely. I don’t think you’ll see it unless you know it’s there, but there’s names,” Derek explained, and all of a sudden, as he peered at the interweaving links, there _were_. Names. His name. 

“My name?” he asked, looking up suddenly.

“Mm,” Derek hummed. “You’re family.” 

It was that, rather than anything else that had happened that day, that broke him. 

He growled, more than anything, an an angry, raw noise that tore from him, and Derek actually took a step back, looking astonished. 

“He’s supposed to be my _Dad,”_ Isaac howled, his eyes bleeding to yellow, and his claws protruding from his fingertips. 

“Isaac,” Derek warned, voice low. 

“It’s not fucking fair. I didn’t do anything to deserve it. I didn’t do _anything_.” 

They were words he’d never spoken before, had barely wanted to feel them, but he could feel his father’s fingers around his throat again, and despite being surrounded by open space, he was trapped against the wall, pinned. 

“Hey, whoa,” Derek was saying somewhere on the periphery of his consciousness, and rushing forward to steady Isaac as he wobbled, struggling for breath. “Isaac, calm down. _Isaac._ You have to breathe, just - _breathe_.” 

The last word was the only word that was an order, the timbre of the Alpha’s voice deepening, leaving no room for resistance. 

He took a breath, his wolf taking over and obeying, and the light came back to his eyes, his lungs filling up again with sweet, cool air. He spluttered for a second, but he could breathe again, and he had air, and Derek was still talking in his ear, panicked. 

“Stop babbling,” he choked out, putting his head between his knees and sucking in air, slowly returning to human. Derek stopped. 

“What did he do to you.” 

To be fair, Derek had waited a good three or four minutes for Isaac to calm down and catch his breath. On the flipside, he sounded deadly. 

“Choked me,” Isaac whispered. “Thought he was gonna kill me. Wants me to move home. Abandon you.” 

His voice broke, but he cleared it, and he was firm again. Strong. 

“I’m not going back.” 

Derek was quiet again for a long time, and Isaac could smell the carrots going soft and funny on the bench. 

“No, you’re not,” he agreed, and when Isaac looked up, Derek’s eyes were flaming red. 

“It’s okay,” he murmured, startled by the lack of control. Derek was always controlled. Always. 

“No. It’s not.” The words were short and sharp. “I’ll take care of it. He won’t see you again.” 

Isaac opened his mouth to argue, but Derek stopped him with a glare. He wanted to say, don’t hurt him, don’t do what I know you’re going to do, but no words came. He was all out of protests. 

He closed his mouth again, and let his head hang, feeling slightly nauseous. This was as close to permission as Derek was ever going to get to do what he’d wanted to do for _months_ , since Isaac had spilled his guts to the man about what his home life was like. He’d signed a man’s death warrant without even speaking a word. 

Derek breathed out through his nose in a sharp exhale, and Isaac could feel the Alpha wolf stirring in the other man’s chest, itching to be released and attack, his own instinctively shying away from the feeling. 

“Not tonight,” Derek said finally, and he sounded resigned, disappointed. “Soon.” 

* * *

 Stiles really didn’t know what had possessed him. Honestly, he didn’t. He’d had exactly _zero_ intention of going to the Hales’ house and kissing the guy. Even if it was only on the cheek. Sure, he could recognise how good-looking Derek was. Blind people could do that. But he usually had _plans_ for this kind of stuff. 

Scott could testify to that. He’d always formed a crush, stuck to the crush, and made obsessive lists about how to get the crush. His few little one night stands didn’t count, on account of him being wasted almost every time. 

He didn’t waltz into guys’ family Christmases and kiss them. That was just – no. Not his rules. He didn’t do that shit. 

And yet. Derek’s cheeks had been pink, and he’d actually hugged him, and Stiles had returned that with a kiss. It had felt natural in the moment, like the right thing to do. He was half convinced his body had just gone ahead and done it without consulting his mind. 

Maybe the gifts had been overboard. But he liked giving gifts. It wasn’t like he could have afforded to buy the big, flashy stuff. His home-made things would have to do, so he’d made them as impressive as he could. 

Fuck. 

“And now I have to _work_ with the guy,” he added to Scott in a whine. They were both sitting on their sofa, half-watching a re-run of Storage Wars, which usually, Stiles wouldn’t dare talk through. 

“I don’t know what to say, Stiles, you kissed the dude. You kinda have to face up to that,” Scott replied, shrugging one shoulder. Sometimes he offered blind loyalty, and sometimes he offered common sense. Stiles wouldn’t admit it, but he knew he needed the common sense most of the time. 

“I _know_ , but how? I don’t know why I did it. And it’s not like I made out with him. It wasn’t even on the lips. Do you think I could get away with it being, like, some French goodbye thing?” 

“Stiles. You’re not French.” 

“Oh. Yeah. Point.” 

They were silent for a moment, before Stiles huffed and groaned. 

“I don’t even think I _like_ him,” he exclaimed, frustrated. 

“You totally like him, Stiles, don’t be an idiot. You bitch about the guy all the time, you went to his place for Christmas, to meet his _family_ , and you kissed him. I’ve known you long enough to know when you’re into someone,” Scott countered, levelling him with a firm look.

“You don’t get to lecture me about relationships,” Stiles countered, but his glare was weak and really, he’d done all the bitching about Allison he was allowed to. For now.

“Dude, at least I know I love her. I get to kiss her all the time and I don’t have this weird confused guilt thing afterwards,” Scott shot back. He looked inordinately pleased with himself. Smug, even. 

“I didn’t mean to kiss him! Or. Maybe I did. I don’t know. Fuck this.” 

“Can you please just work it out already so I know whether or not to go give him the stern best friend talking to?” Scott sighed, rolling his eyes. 

If he didn’t know that the stern best friend talking to involved more friendly threatening than embarrassing stories about Stiles, he might have been more offended. 

He was quiet for a few minutes, thinking, and letting Scott enjoy the silence before he burst out with the answer. 

“OK! I think I like him. I do. I’ve decided. This is a thing that has happened.” 

Scott glanced at him, apparently decided he was being serious, and then stood from the sofa, walking into the kitchen without a word. When he returned a moment later, he was holding a pint of chocolate ice-cream Stiles definitely hadn’t known was in the freezer. 

“Uh, what’s this for?” he asked, when the wolf handed him the icy tub and a spoon. 

“You like Derek Hale, and you kissed him, then ran away. You need the ice-cream,” was the answer. 

And yeah. He really needed the ice-cream. 

* * *

The thing about liking Derek Hale was that it was kind of a suicide mission. Stiles saw that now. A few days after his revelation, he wished he’d never had it. Liking Derek Hale was – it _sucked_. Because though they might be friends now, very tentative friends, the dude was still grumpy as hell. He still didn’t talk to anyone really ever. 

But, he had invited Stiles to meet his family. He answered his texts. He’d helped him work out something to do in the workplace. So, there was some faint hope. Hope for what, Stiles wasn’t totally sure of yet. It was more than enough to just know that he was into the guy. That was enough to clutter up his thought process. 

As for what he _wanted_. Well. That was something else entirely. He’d thought about it long and hard. Did he want sex? Well, yeah, he kind of always did. Not as much as when he was a teenager, but definitely enough to rate normally on the male libido scale. But did he want _just_ sex? 

Not really. 

He’d done the just sex thing before. It was fun in college, but one night stands and fuck buddies were, well, something to be _left_ in college. He’d been there, done that, and he liked to think he resembled something a little more like an adult now. Adults had relationships. Not casual sex. The kind of adult he wanted to be, anyway. 

A relationship with Derek, though? Yeah, he wasn’t so sure about that. Relationships were – scary. Really fucking scary. And Stiles could stare down witches and minotaurs and even wolfed-out Alpha werewolves without blinking. A relationship was something else entirely. 

If he tried this relationship thing with Derek (and this was even assuming the guy was _into_ it), and he screwed it up, he’d have ruined his job, and probably what could have been a nice friendship. 

No. He was going to suck it up, have embarrassing sexual fantasies in the privacy of his own bedroom, and hope that it all went away. Liking Derek Hale didn’t have to be a fatal disease. He was going to overcome it. 

It was surprisingly easy enough to ignore, actually, because the nerves of going back to work were a plenty good enough distraction. He liked work, he didn’t know why he’d be so – well, terrified, to return. The rational part of him supposed that it was because he’d been stabbed, which was traumatic, and he associated it with work, even if he hadn’t been in the office when it happened.

“You OK, buddy?” Scott had asked the morning he went back in, handing him a coffee. “You look a little green.” 

“Fine. Just fine. Totally all good. Nothing wrong here,” he’d breezily replied. Lying to Scott never got him anywhere, and that had been true even before he got bit and gained the heartbeat trick. 

“OK, so a little worried about going back,” he conceded, scowling into his mug. Scott’s sympathetic face was almost too much for him. 

“You’ll be OK, Stiles, I promise. I’m only going out with a clean-up crew for a few hours because Talia wants me to see what happens when we kill something,” he said, in what Stiles guessed he thought was a reassurance. “But I’ll be watching your back the whole time I’m there, and when I’m not, everyone else will be. Swear. Derek, the most.” 

“Why Derek, the most?” 

“Because he stops everybody talking shit about you.” 

“He does?” 

“Totally. Not that they do it a lot anymore. I think they’re all kinda shook up that you got hurt. But yeah, whenever someone’s a douche, he gets really mad. He’s kind of intimidating mad. I wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of him. I can’t imagine being Isaac.” 

Scott’s mouth twisted into a little shuddery scowl as he spoke, as if he was contemplating it. 

“I don’t know about the rest of that, but Derek seems like a good Alpha. Isaac loves him, that’s for sure,” Stiles said, thinking back to how the guy’s face had lit up back when they were discussing the Alpha. 

“Isaac loves _yoooou_ ,” Scott replied, grinning. It was, seemingly, his new favourite topic. 

“Yeah, I don’t know what to do with that.” 

And he really didn’t. He didn’t think that Scott was lying, or embellishing, though he hadn’t exactly seen proof of it yet. Isaac was just a guy who hadn’t had friends before, probably. Which was sad and probably made Stiles feel better about himself than he should, but he didn’t think it justified Isaac falling in love with him or something.  

“You could ask him out,” Scott suggested with a grin. Which, yeah, was a possible option. He _could_ ask the guy out, and he was almost certain he’d get a yes. That would be a nice change from the usual sting of rejection. (The sting wasn’t that usual, he did okay, he just hadn’t asked anyone out lately). 

“Yeah, but that would just be cruel and unnecessary,” Stiles countered, shaking his head. 

“If you’re not going to make a move on Derek, then you might as well make a move on someone who’s definitely into you,” Scott reasoned, and though he could see the logic, Stiles’ gut warned him against the idea. 

“Isaac’s a nice guy. Really nice, y’know, even if I thought he was kind of weird and awkward at first. I don’t wanna mess him around. If I asked him out, we’d just end up screwing and then I’d never want to go out again. I’d be thinking about stupid Derek the entire time,” he explained. Judging by the look on Scott’s face, that was the right decision. Scott’s looks generally told him where he was sitting on the moral compass, and if he didn’t look disdainful or grossed out, he was on the right side. 

“You’re a good guy,” he said, nudging Stiles’ foot under the table. “Even if you are never gonna get laid again.”

Groaning, Stiles pushed himself up out of his chair, still only slightly tender, and that was mostly in his head, really, and dumped his plate in the sink, Scott following suit. He was going into the office with him that morning, upon Scott’s insistence.

“Look, man, you know you can call me if you need me, yeah?” Scott told him as he drove, the snow falling lightly as they made their way through last night’s sludge of it on the roads. “Even if it’s when I’m out, I’ll come back. Yeah?” 

The offer was characteristically sweet coming from Scott, who was an overprotective mother hen sometimes, but Stiles knew he wasn’t going to take it. He was determined not to be a baby about this. All he was doing was going into the office, sitting at a desk (right beside Derek’s) and working with Deaton on whatever needed working on. Easy. No leaving the safety of the four walls. No social engagements. No Peter Hale. No stabbing. It was going to be fine. Completely and totally fine.

He was so nervous he felt sick. His palms were sweaty, and he had to keep wiping them on his jeans— he could wear jeans today, he’d realised, because he wasn’t going anywhere, and Derek always wore jeans to work. Dark jeans with boots. Dark jeans with boots that made his ass look particularly sculpted. 

No. He wasn’t going to think anymore about Derek and his jeans and his ass or his anything. Certainly not about that ridiculous kiss and the running away spectacle he’d made of himself. 

“I know, bud,” he answered, swallowing and trying not to think too hard about _this is the first time he was going to see Derek since it happened_. Maybe Derek wouldn’t even want to talk to him. That would be good. Sort of. Derek could be so irritated with Stiles’ impromptu little kiss that he’d decided not to be his friend after all. That - could work. There’d be no wondering, then. It would just be certain that he was never going to have the chance to ask him out, even if he could work up the courage.

Second thought, that sounded terrible. He’d rather Derek awkwardly say hello to him and maybe avoid his eyes. At least then there’d be a ‘hello’ to build off of.  

“Stiles,” Scott said gently, and he looked over at the other man, realising that the car had stopped, and they were just sitting in the parking lot. “You’re gonna be fine. But we have to get out now.” 

“Yeah,” he said quietly, and rather than cracking a joke which he knew Scott would have seen right through anyway, he swung himself out of the car, both feet planted firmly on the ground, and walked directly into the nondescript building, heart pounding. 

It might have been that pounding heart, which all the werewolves would have been able to hear, or it might have been the fact that it was the first time he was back at work since the stabbing, but every head turned to him, every pair of eyes on him, and he felt his gut constrict. 

He’d always liked being the centre of attention — he was the king of keg-stands — but this felt awful. He ignored the stares, and the few little whispers that were starting up, ones he would have been able to make out if he'd had their hearing. Deaton was staring at him, too, but only for a moment, before he welcomed Stiles with a smile and pushed a seat out for him at his desk. 

“Good morning, Stiles,” he said calmly, as if they weren't being watched by the entire office. “I have a few tasks for you. Simple things, but they need doing all the same.” 

On any other occasion, he might have been irritated by the babying, the way that he _knew_ Deaton was attempting to ease him back into the flow of things. But for right now, with the way that his stomach was churning, he was just kind of appreciative. 

He slid into the seat that had been placed beside Deaton’s at his desk, which had conveniently been cleared to a certain point, a clear space for Stiles to work on, and nodded, mustering a smile. 

“Lay it on me,” he said, mock-casual. No one was going to pull him up on it, they were all too uncomfortable about what had happened for that, he was certain. And given this revelation that they talked shit about him when he wasn't there (not so surprising) and that Derek stopped them (surprising), he wasn’t going to make any more of a fool of himself than necessary. 

Deaton had returned his calm, cool way of being, one which Stiles had always admired, the way you admire someone you know you can never be like. Deaton was always still, his movements only ever serving a specific function, helpful to him. Stiles fidgeted and tapped constantly, his body unable to stop moving. The only time he even resembled the older man was when he was using magic, and even then, it was a wild kind of magic, not as neat and smooth as it could be. 

Deaton placed a few beads in front of him, which didn’t really look that dissimilar to the ones found in kids’ sets you could buy in junk stores, except these ones seemed to be made of some strange kind of glass.

“They need basic protective enchantments,” Deaton told him, barely even looking away from his own work now. “Very simple, I’m sure you’d be able to do it in your sleep,” he added. 

Stiles paused, thinking about asking what _kind_ of protective spells he wanted, because there were a whole plethora to choose from, really, but he kept quiet, looking down at the beads. He’d seen these before — the active agents wore them on pieces of leather around their wrists, so Deaton probably meant the general one size fits all kind of spell. 

Brow furrowing, he picked one of the beads up between his fingers and rolled it around, examining it. It was small, which meant he probably couldn’t imbue it with _that_ much power, or its molecular structure would just entirely collapse. Besides, it wasn’t a good idea to put so much of your defences into one object, in case it got crushed or damaged. 

Stiles had learned this firsthand, when he made one of his girlfriends back in college what was meant to be an anti-roofie amulet to put on her necklace. It had gotten trampled under her feet when it fell off on the dance-floor, and the resulting bubble of protection had burst instantly. 

The bead was getting sweaty in his hand now, though, like his body was reminding him that he was taking too long with what was meant to be a simple task, so he held it on the flat of his palm and focused, closing his eyes and picturing who would wear it. Scott. He saw the bead hanging from the man’s wrist, protecting him from stray bursts of magic, from wolf claws, from venom, from gunshots. There was a burst of light that lit up the backs of his eyelids in red before he opened them. 

The bead looked just as it had before. Small, innocuous. But he knew that now it would serve as a first line of protection. Maybe one that might be easily penetrated for someone who knew what they were doing, but it could be the difference between a scratch and a deep slash. It would allow for the wolves’ reaction times to kick in, give them a second’s warning. 

Stiles really could have used one of these in the office with Ramirez. Maybe if he’d been wearing one, he might have been able to duck out of the way of the knife, and — 

No. He wasn’t going to think about that now. He’d spent enough hours agonising over what had happened, analysing the what-ifs, trying to find a way to stop having nightmares about it. Enough was enough. 

He focused the remainder of his attention on the rest of the beads, keeping the wearer in his mind’s eye, personalising each one. When he finally looked up from the task, he was startled to realise that an hour had passed, and Deaton had moved onto another project entirely. 

“Shit,” he said under his breath. “I didn’t realise that was taking so long,” he added in a slightly louder voice, addressing Deaton. The beads sat in a neat pile on his side of the desk. The man looked up from his own work and picked up a bead to examine it for a moment. 

“On the contrary,” he replied, setting the bead down and scooping them into a small paper bag. “Considering the amount of magic you expended on them, I’m surprised you’ve finished so quickly.” 

It didn’t sound like chastisement, so Stiles didn’t linger long on the thought that he’d fucked up the task. Deaton looked almost pleased, even, which really meant that his lips had lifted into a very slight smile, barely perceptible. 

“Oh. Cool,” Stiles said after a beat. “So. What else is there?” 

Deaton actually offered a smirk before setting a large stack of thick paper onto Stiles’ side of the desk, about fifty pages of it, at least. 

“Derek’s unfinished reports,” he explained, and yeah, he was totally getting a kick out of this, wasn’t he? That bastard. 

Holding back the groan, Stiles kicked off his shoes, because fuck it, if he was going to be poring over unfinished forensic reports for the next few hours, he was going to be comfortable, and drew his feet up underneath him, taking the first report off the pile and sighing. 

It was all typed up, of course, but there were sections left blank, and a few photographs. Beside them, there was an elegant, narrow line of handwriting, that Stiles could only assume was Derek’s. Given the short, sharp phrasing, he was almost certain. 

It was only when he realised that this was _Derek’s_ handwriting that he looked over at the desk beside them for the first time. 

It was empty. 

Well, not empty. There were neat piles of papers all over it, and a microscope or two. But no one was sitting at it. Derek wasn’t there. 

That wasn’t the most surprising thing, to be honest. What Stiles was more astonished about was that he hadn’t even thought about it. For all that worrying and stressing and agonising he’d done over how awkward it was going to be seeing him, and the butterflies he’d had in his stomach thinking about it, once he’d started working, he’d forgotten all about it. 

Derek’s desk being empty probably wasn’t anything to worry about, though, he figured (hoped), so he continued to leaf through the reports, which were at least more interesting than the ones he used to steal off his dad’s desk. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All I can say about the long hiatus is, I'm sorry. Life got in the way.


End file.
